Binary Star System
by CherenkovRadiation
Summary: Two long-time buddies on their winding road to a deeper understanding. The story contains a gold tooth, a divorce in Las Vegas, and Artie Ziff's bathtub.
1. The Question

_Disclaimer: This is fan fiction. Most characters in this story are based on characters from the cartoon show 'The Simpsons', owned by Matt Groening / 20th Century Fox, and the story is set in the fictional 'Simpsons' universe. Neither those characters nor the setting are my original creations. I do not earn any money with this work._

_This was written for the fun of it while I was supposed to do more sensible things. Its existence is due to my attitude to waste my time, talent and dedication. _

_While writing, I imagined Lenny and Carl as real persons and not as 'toons'. _

_As they are secondary characters in 'The Simpsons', there is not much of their background revealed. I tried to pick up as much from the show as possible. At the same time, to turn this into a story, I made up my own background for Lenny and Carl. Of course this is not what the 'Simpsons' story writers would have made up, or any other fan fiction writer. _

_Well, yes, it is slash, but if you are here for some steaming hot sex scenes, you will be disappointed. The slash is hidden between the lines._

_Rated M for scenes some readers might find disturbing. (Dealing with domestic violence, other relationship problems of all kinds, bullying, suicide attempts, mental illness.)_

_English is not my native language. When dancing with it, I sometimes take wrong steps. I tried to eliminate as many mistakes as possible by using an internet dictionary, a search engine, and Wikipedia, and by re-reading the text several times. Still, there are probably some grammar mistakes, and my word choice might be unusual sometimes._

* * *

_Edit: Story now available in German. Check my profile for the link; inserting it here somehow does not work. _

_Edit 2: Chapter 1 now beta'd. Many thanks to __**klu**__ for taking the time and putting the effort into it! See my 'favorite authors' list for her profile._

* * *

**The Question**

Lenny dares to ask once.

They sit on a bench at the pier, drinking Duff. It is Friday evening. Moe is probably wondering why two of his best customers have not yet appeared in his dank tavern. Homer is probably wondering where his best friends have gotten to after they said "See ya soon!" on the power plant's parking lot. But it is the last day of summer, and the evening sky is orange and rosy, so Lenny and Carl made a spontaneous excursion to the harbor.

"Nice to be out here again!" Lenny says, stretching and lolling comfortably.

"Yeah, I had almost forgotten Springfield was a coastal town."

Lenny watches with lazy attention the people passing by. "Look at that lady over there. Her fur coat matches her dog. The same color. I wonder, is that a coincidence?"

"Maybe her coat is made from another dog."

"Scary, if you think of it." Lenny takes a big swig from his beer can.

Carl watches some junkies who hide behind a dumpster in a recess between two shops, brotherly sharing their only syringe.

Lenny follows his gaze. "Looks unhealthy." He burps.

Just that moment Chief Wiggum walks by. He tries to look important and alert, but he is wheezing pathetically from the strenuous effort walking exerts on a fat man. "Evening, gentlemen!" he says to Lenny and Carl, mopping his forehead and failing to notice the junkies.

"Evening, Chief Wiggum!"

Lenny watches him sway out of earshot. Carl watches Lenny, who obviously has another pleasantry up his sleeve. Carl does not get disappointed.

"If Wiggle-Wiggum gets any fatter, his truncheon will be out of his reach!"

Carl chuckles good-humored.

Lenny's attention then shifts to a large, pink bus stopping at the pier. Its doors spit out a horde of tourists. They are chatting and laughing while they are piling up their luggage around them.

Lenny and Carl listen to the foreign language.

"Dutch," Lenny finally says. "No, wait. Danish."

"Close, but no," Carl says. "Norwegian. Remember, I know a bit about Scandinavian languages."

"Yeah, right, living in Iceland as a child." Pause. A thoughtful look. "Carl, by the way … where do your ancestors come from?"

"Like I know! Where do _your_ ancestors come from?"

"Europe or somewhere, I guess."

"Mine come from Africa… Or somewhere. I guess," Carl says.

Lenny shuts up at once. He may not be 'book clever or street clever', but he is clever enough to notice the sarcasm in Carl's voice. He knows this sarcasm well. It is time to shut up and stay quiet.

* * *

Carl does not want to talk about what his grandmother told him. The older he gets, the more that story puts him into rage. He even does not want to think about it, because then he feels bitter and wrong, and the universe looks absurd.

This is when he cannot stand the sight of his co-workers. This is when he bullies Lenny with sarcasm, because in such times he even cannot stand the sight of Lenny. This is when he gets so drunk it frightens even Moe.

Lenny's ancestors could have been _the others_. If it happened today, Lenny himself could be _one of them_. What would stop him? Sense? Sensibility? Hah.

* * *

To distract and calm himself, Carl watches the tourists passing them by in a noisy queue, carrying bags and pulling suitcases with small hobbling wheels.

Lenny is pressing his beer can flat between his hands, his brows knitted.

Carl waits until Lenny has folded it into a packet. Then he takes a deep breath. "Moe's?"

Lenny nods with a little smile, gets up and throws the packet into the waste bin. They walk away.

The subject is not mentioned again for years.


	2. Night Shift

When they enter the cafeteria to take their midnight break, all three of them say, "Oh!"

They are used to the black night standing in front of the cafeteria windows. But, unnoticed by them while they worked deep inside the brightly lit power plant, it has started to snow. Snowflakes are tumbling down in a swirling curtain. There are already white pillows on the window sills, glittering in the light streaming out.

"The first snow!" Lenny is overjoyed like a child. He skips to the window, while Homer marches straight to the donut box and Carl to the coffee percolator.

"Carl, Homer, look at this!" Lenny presses his nose against the window, staring through his own reflection at the flakes. Carl looks up from filling the percolator with water and smiles. Homer rummages in the donut box. When he pulls his hands out, he has a donut on every finger. He starts eating them while walking to their favorite table.

Carl glances into the box. "Homer!" he says reproachfully. Then he shrugs and carries the box with the last donut in it to the table, putting it down at Lenny's place. "Here, my friend. The last one's for you. Hurry, before Homer eats it."

Lenny abandons the window. "What about you?"

"I've got my apple slices." Carl wraps the broccoli rubber band off his lunch box.

Lenny looks at the donut. "It has your favorite icing."

"I've got my favorite kind of apple."

"Okay." And the donut is gone.

"Ow!" Homer has bitten one of his fingers.

"Hee, hee, donut with meat filling!" giggles Lenny.

"Ow! Ow!"

* * *

They extend their midnight break until one o'clock. This is the advantage the night shift has: they are left in peace. No pointy-nosed 104-year-old man pops up behind the employees when they are solving crosswords, googling 'Japanese doll brothel' or using a rod of uranium-238 as shoe horn. And the bespectacled number two in the plant hierarchy does not march up and down the halls, holding his clipboard like he wants to slap somebody with it.

There are also only half as many co-workers around, because the office personnel do not work at night. The halls are empty. The central office building is dark. No one else is in the cafeteria but Homer, Lenny, and Carl. It is so quiet they hear the humming of the vending machines.

It is still snowing. "Almost hypnotizing." Lenny rests his elbow on the window sill, sipping from his coffee mug with 'CARL'S BEST FRIEND' written on it.

Carl has a matching mug with 'LENNY'S BEST FRIEND'. When Homer noticed their mugs, he felt excluded and sulked several breaks in a row (which did not keep him from eating donuts). Lenny and Carl felt genuinely sorry, but a mug with 'CARL'S AND LENNY'S OTHER BEST FRIEND' seemed no good idea. Neither did 'ABLE TO SULK AND EAT AT THE SAME TIME'.

The problem was solved when Homer complained to his family and got a mug with 'DAD OF BART, LISA & MAGGIE' on it.

"Defines the boundary," Carl later said to Lenny. Lenny did not understand what Carl meant, but nodded wisely.

* * *

They talk about the latest baseball match. They talk about the latest basketball match. They talk about the latest episode of a show in which cars get pimped only to get spectacularly smashed in the end.

Carl notices Lenny is unusually quiet. He looks at him. Lenny has his eyes closed and his mouth open and is about to drop the mug filled with hot coffee on his lap.

"Lenny," Carl says in a calm, soothing voice. "Put your mug on the window sill."

Lenny does so, moving like a robot.

"And now wake up!" Carl shouts into his ear, shaking his arm. "We have to evacuate the plant! Homer caused a meltdown!"

"AAAAAH! NOT AGAIN!" Lenny jumps to his feet, bumping into the table.

Homer laughs. Carl grins.

"Hey! That was mean!" Lenny is hurt.

"At least I kept you from spilling coffee all over you."

Lenny looks at the mug on the window sill. The steam from it is condensing on the glass.

* * *

It is Lenny's fifth mug of coffee. Much more coffee is to follow. Carl knows. It is not his and Lenny's first night shift together.

"Man, are you never tired?" Lenny asks him angrily.

Carl is always calm; no matter if it is three a.m. in Moe's Tavern and he has drunk enough to make an elephant sway, or three a.m. at the power plant and he has been guarding a monitor with dancing lines and changing numbers for hours and hours.

Lenny is so tired he has to lean against the door frame. His eyes feel like there is sand in them.

Maybe it is the warmth. The power plant is warm like a womb. The poorly insulated pipes stretching along the corridors radiate heat. So do the barrels of decaying waste stacked in every corner. So do the reactor cores that burn like stars in the bowels of the power plant.

Lenny keeps walking out into the hall to get more coffee from the vending machines. If you want to call that gruesome swill 'coffee'; even its color is wrong.

At least it contains enough caffeine - or enough sugar - to keep Lenny from falling asleep. He becomes wound up instead, paces up and down, runs to the toilet every five minutes because all the fluid he drank needs released, and comes back only to run out again and return with chocolate, chips and candy from the vending machines.

"Thanks, I'm on a diet," Carl refuses the gummy bears offered to him.

"You have my sympathy, mate," Lenny says with his mouth full of wine gum. It sounds insincere because he does not know dieting from his own experience.

This is something Carl does not understand. Every time he looks at Lenny that guy is stuffing his face with something containing sugar and fat in perilous doses. Yet he stays thin like a bamboo stick. He has to keep his pants in their place with suspenders, because he is too thin for belts. They always lack a hole where Lenny needs it.

Carl revealed to him it is not illegal to punch more holes into belts, but Lenny admitted he has gotten so used to suspenders he feels naked without them.

* * *

Each time Lenny comes from the toilet, he passes Homer's door. They traditionally leave their doors open during night shifts, and so Lenny glimpses a snap-shot of Homer's work habits each time.

Homer is spinning round and round on his swivel chair, waving a flag of the Springfield Isotopes.

"Go, Isotopes, go!" Lenny shouts encouragement.

The next time Homer is lying on the floor, trying to solve a puzzle of four pieces.

"Need help?"

"Heck no! I have nothing else to while away the time until next break!"

But he has. Next time Lenny passes his door Homer is giggling in front of his computer screen.

"Are you googling your name again?"

"30,100,000 hits!"

"Wow." Lenny looks over Homer's shoulder. "Uh, what is a 'GröFaZ'?"

Carl, who heard them talking, comes in and has a look. "You're not googling your name, Homer. Unless your name is Adolf Hitler," he states dryly.

"Is it? Homer? Is it?" Lenny asks.

* * *

When Lenny and Carl want to go to the next break, they find Homer snoring away in his chair, surrounded by the family photos he decorated his bleak control center with.

"Hey, Carl, what happened to that life-sized cardboard cutout of Mr. Burns?" whispers Lenny.

"Must be somewhere in the basement between the Christmas decoration and all that stuff."

"Do you have the key to that room?"

"No, but I have the key to the room where all the keys are kept."

"Great! Let's fetch that cardboard cutout, put it up here and wake Homer. He will think Mr. Burns caught him sleeping. I wanna see _that_ face!"

"Nice nasty idea."

* * *

They open the door with the yellow handles and the rattling glass panes to the winter night and walk across a snow-covered yard to the central office building, leaving a double track of footprints. The sky is orange. The snow settles gently on the pipes curling around the buildings and on the sides of the cooling towers. The warning lights at the top of the towers have blurry halos.

There is no cardboard Burns between the Christmas decorations.

"Come on, let's not waste any more time here," Carl says.

In the staircase he suddenly stops. "Sshh." He points upstairs.

Both of them listen. And there it is again: A hasty, stealthy sound, coming from the top floor where Mr. Burns has his office.

At this time of night, no one is supposed to be there.

They exchange a look, then go upstairs, prepared for a burglar and a fight.

Carl runs his hand over some light switches. The chandeliers light up one after the other, revealing the paneled and carpeted hall.

Lenny marches towards Burns' office, presses the door handle down and is so surprised to find the door unlocked he stumbles into the room.

Burns' office is a vast space. Far away the large windows are soaring in the darkness. The snow lying on the balcony casts a dim glow over the ceiling.

There is a rustling noise which sounds exactly like the robe of a ghost getting dragged over the floor. If Lenny was alone, he would slam the door and bolt. Feeling Carl standing behind him makes him brave. He finds a light switch. The lamps in the glass cabinets go on.

The sound of the 'ghost robe' came from a jungle of potted plants. Their leaves are moving in the draft.

"Let's see if someone is hiding here."

Each one of them checks one side of the room. At Burns' desk, they meet again. Carl sits down in the large red armchair and places his feet on the desk pad, grinning at Lenny.

Lenny watches Carl. He is standing halfway in the cone of light thrown by the desk lamp, face and chest hidden in the shade.

"Hey, is that Smithers' clipboard over there?" he suddenly says, reaching for something.

"Lenny! You're not gonna touch his holy clipboard, are you?"

Lenny is paging through the sheets already.

"Somethin' interesting?"

"Nah, he just printed out some pie diagrams."

"Pie diagrams? We should show them to Homer."

"Yeah, something tells me he would like them!"

"Homer is amazing, ain't he."

"He is."

They both love Homer. That man is really amazing. Either because he is 'stupid in a clever way', as Lenny puts it, or so clever he decided to pretend he is stupid, as Carl suspects. Whatever - being with him is always fun.

Carl folds his arms behind his head and writhes to find the most comfortable position. There is a pointed dent in the chair, shaped by Mr. Burns' bony ass.

"Good old Burnsy!" Carl says. "He must be fast asleep in his villa now. God bless him."

"And Smithers is sitting by his bed and holding his hand!"

"Oh, he would do that."

Lenny walks up and down in front of the desk, imitating what he thinks is a gay swagger. Hugging the clipboard, he lilts, "Ohh, sir, of course, sir, with pleasure, sir! Don't overstrain yourself, I'll pick the eraser up for you!"

Carl laughs out loud. He seldom laughs out loud, but Lenny imitating Smithers with his squeaky voice is the silliest thing he has seen in a while.

"Carl, now I know what happened to the cardboard cutout! Smithers took it home with him!" Lenny's eyes sparkle with amusement. "And there he is kneeling in front of it, going, 'Ohh, sir, I always wanted to tell y-'"

Something moves at the brink of Lenny's visual field. A human shaped specter is hovering only a few yards away from him, diaphanous, pale …

"GAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Lenny jumps over the desk and clings to Carl's sleeve, halfway falling over him. Carl flinches.

"AGHOSTAGHOSTAGHOST! THERETHERETHERE!"

Carl steadies his friend by holding his elbow and looks into the direction in which he is wildly pointing.

"Morning, Mr. Smithers."

"Morning," the man says with a flat voice. He steps forward and into the light. What Lenny mistook for a ghost turns out to be a three-dimensional, living human being, not diaphanous – but pale. Smithers' hair and clothes are disheveled. His eyes burn in a feverish hue.

He entered the room unheard through the connecting door to his own office.

Still shaking like a hare, Lenny wonders if Smithers is drunk, or if he has been crying.

"Sorry, Mr. Smithers." Carl takes his feet from the desk pad.

"You're not supposed to be here." Instead of looking angry, Smithers looks like he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"Sorry, Mr. Smithers," Carl repeats. He gets up. "We're going already." His hand still on Lenny's elbow, he leads him towards the door.

* * *

Smithers picks up the clipboard which Lenny dropped in front of the desk. The sheets are crumpled.

Looking up, Smithers sees exactly what he expects to see: Just when his two employees reach the door, that Leonard guy turns around. For a moment they stare at each other. Then Mr. Leonard quickly averts his eyes and follows his friend out of the office. The door is gently shut.

Smithers sighs and tries to straighten the paper sheets. He will have to print these pie diagrams out again before showing them to his boss.

* * *

At six in the morning, they knock off work. When they rinse their coffee mugs and put them into the break room cupboard, they hear car doors slamming outside, and the hall is full of voices from leaving A shift employees and arriving B shift employees saying 'Good morning!' to each other.

It is still dark. Five inches of snow cover the parking lot and creak like styrofoam under their feet. Lenny and Carl throw snowballs at the cooling towers. One of them hits a crow. They do not see the bird, but hear it caw somewhere in the orange-black sky above them. Homer laughs and throws snowballs at Lenny and Carl, then drives home to Marge and a breakfast consisting of fried bacon wedged between fried bacon and fried bacon and decorated with fried bacon.

Lenny brushes the rest of a snowball off Carl's back.

A lonely light shimmers through one of the top floor windows in the central office building. Smithers.

"I wonder what _he_ wanted there," Carl says when they are driving off the parking lot. "It wasn't exactly his time of morning either."

Lenny is sitting in the front passenger seat, shivering from the cold. Carl turns on the heating.

* * *

After night shifts, they usually have breakfast at a bakery not far from Moe's Tavern.

Lenny, who has been reticent since that awkward encounter, suddenly says between buns and muffins, "Carl, did you notice how sick he looked?"

Carl knows at once who 'he' is. "Trouble with Burnsie, perhaps."

"When you think of it, Smithers is a … a ..."

"Weirdo?"

"Poor soul."

Carl meditates on this. Finally he says, "Lenny, pitying someone above you in the hierarchy is a waste of, uh, pity. Your boss is the one who decides if you get promoted. Or fired. No matter how much you pity him."

Lenny is impressed. That was a long speech for Carl. Still, Lenny insists, "We should at least apologize. I mean, we made fun of him and so on."

Carl nods, and the matter is settled.

* * *

They see Smithers again four days later, when they work the early shift. He follows Burns on his nine o'clock round, carrying the old man's coat, his umbrella, the case with his medicine and a huge stack of paper with a book lying on top. It is like every other day, and Smithers says "Good morning" like every other day.

* * *

One hour later, when Smithers has retreated into his office, there is a polite knock at the door.

"Come in!"

They sidle in and stop in front of his desk. Mr. Leonard hitches his thumbs under his suspenders. Mr. Carlson buries his hands in his pockets.

"And what can I do for you?"

"We want to apologize for our terrible behavior a few days ago," Mr. Leonard says.

"And for walking into Mr. Burns' office," Mr. Carlson adds.

"We only did so because we heard noises, and we thought there was a burglar."

"Hmm," Smithers says. "You probably heard me when I came in. Well, alright. Let's not talk about this anymore."

"Thanks, Mr. Smithers."

* * *

Apologizing was Leonard's idea, Smithers is sure of that.

Leonard and Carlson.

This inseparable duo is known to their co-workers as 'ebony and ivory', 'salt 'n' pepper', 'opposites attract', and, more recently, 'the gay lovebirds from sector 7'. Unbeknownst to them, the staff has a bet going on: Are they gay or not? Are both of them gay, or only the white dude? When will they come out of the closet?

The bolder ones asked Smithers for his expert opinion. He refused any comment. "The sexual orientation of my employees is not my business."

Unofficially, Smithers suspects Leonard to be rather gay than happy since he applied here for a job as nuclear physicist, coming fresh from the university with sideburns and bell-bottoms. Something about the man says, 'My closet is inside another closet, just to be sure'.

Meanwhile, Smithers also suspects Carlson. That fellow does not look gay and does not act gay, but sticks to a friend any straight man would back off from. He even becomes more and more attached to Leonard!

Most people do not notice, because he is generally quiet, but without his friend, he becomes even quieter, almost melancholic.

He applied for a job here one year after his friend and was put into a different shift. It was Leonard who found someone willing to swap shifts with Carlson, and it was him who came to Smithers' office, Carlson and the other guy in tow, to get Smithers' OK. But, it was Carlson who benefited most from the swap. There was a time Smithers thought the man has Asperger's. He was some guy in the background who never talked and never smiled. Now, he works with his friend (and this terrible Homer Simpson), he has become so animated he produces a one-liner every now and then.


	3. Dental Plan

And this is how Lenny's tooth derails Carl's marriage.

It starts with the ice hockey match A shift versus B shift. Violence is avidly awaited. There is much rivalry going on between the shifts, especially between A and B, "which are equal in their quota of airheads, hooligans and addicts", as Smithers describes it to Burns. The C and D shifts are comparatively well-behaved.

Burns hates the power plant's sporting events. He only tolerates them because Smithers patiently explained to him how useful the rivalry between their employees is. "It makes those bastards do their work, sir." Each shift wants to be the most efficient one. Smithers carefully nurses their competition. He plasters the bulletin boards with statistics about the nuclear power plant's output, sick certificates and human failures, all of this for each shift separately and offered in vibrantly colored diagrams for those who cannot read numbers. Smithers also holds motivating speeches at the end of each quarter. He even argued Burns into paying a monthly bonus to the shift that does the best work.

* * *

Homer, who is the trainer of the A shift team, marches up and down in front of his boys.

"... and now we go out and show them who we are!"

"Yeah!"

Everybody expects the game to end in a brawl between the A and B guys, but then Lenny's stick gets between Carl's feet just when he is about to score.

"Watch what you're doing, dimwit!"

Carl pushes Lenny out of the way. Lenny falls on his back.

"Don't push me, assface!"

A well aimed kick. The runner of Lenny's skate hits Carl's knee. Carl gasps for air.

A fraction of a second later, the A shift team is a wild ravel of fists, elbows, feet and hockey sticks. The B shift guys watch the spectacle, convulsed with laughter.

Lenny and Carl fight with their sticks like clumsy swordsmen. Then Lenny gets jostled, the wedged sticks are twisted from his hands, and the end of one of them hits his face.

Smithers jumps over the boards, blowing his whistle.

* * *

The paramedics carry the injured away. Lenny is on his knees and spits blood on the ice.

"You okay?" Carl touches his shoulder.

"At least it's not the eye this time. It's the eyetooth." Lenny opens his hand. The blood-covered tooth lies on his palm.

"I'm sorry."

In the changing room Carl examines his knee.

"Did I hurt you badly?"

"It feels like the kneecap is split."

"Oh. Ouch. I'm sorry too, Carl."

"I say, we can call it quits. Friends again?" Carl stretches out his hand.

Lenny shakes it. "Friends again." He smiles a gap-toothed, blood-smeared smile.

"Whoa. You look like a zombie, old man."

* * *

Carl walks with a limp that gets worse with every step. "Lenny? Will you drive me home?"

"I rather drive you to a doctor first."

Carl has to put his arm around Lenny's shoulders to relieve his injured leg. Lenny puts his arm around Carl's waist. They look like lovers as they slowly walk across the parking lot.

* * *

When Lenny stops at a traffic light, Carl watches him making faces while examining the gap with his tongue.

Lenny says, "A gold tooth would be cool. Man, I would like that!"

"I'll pay it for you."

"Naah, Carl. Don't. It's too expensive."

"Not if we go to Dr. Baxter. He's an old friend of my Dad. He will do it almost for free, if I know him right. That's my Christmas present for you, Lenny."

"Okay, Carl."

"Don't tell Josie about it, okay?" Josie is his wife.

"Promised."

* * *

A few weeks later, an enraptured Lenny ogles himself in the hand mirror Dr. Baxter has given him.

"Wow, look at that baby, Carl!" His speech is slurred, because half his face is numb from the anesthesia.

Fixing the gold tooth in his jaw took some time. Carl, who sat on a chair in the corner, could tell from the way Lenny clenched his hands together on his belly how much stress it meant for him. Lenny is still shaky. Some strands of his hair are plastered to his forehead. But he is happy. Carl cannot remember the last time he was that happy.

Lenny looks at him and smiles his brand new, expensive smile. The anesthesia makes him drool. "Oh!" Embarrassed, he wipes his chin with the back of his hand.

Carl feels strange.

_It is worth it_, he thinks. _Every cent._

* * *

Lenny insists on driving to Moe's. He throws the paper towel into the gutter he was dabbing his face with all the time, pushes the door open and stops on the threshold, smiling broadly at everyone.

Moe abandons his Playdude magazine. Homer takes photos with his cell phone. Lenny runs around and yanks Sam's sleeve to make him look at him, and he even shakes Barney out of his drunken stupor.

The anesthesia still affects him. Lenny cannot keep his beer in his mouth and drools it over himself and the counter. He just laughs. Everyone else laughs, too.

* * *

The following day, Lenny walks through the nuclear power plant and smiles at every co-worker to show his 'baby' off. Carl walks at his side, also smiling. They leave a trail of shook heads and meaningful exchanges of glances.

"Geez, have you seen this."

"Lenny, the Gypsy king."

"And Carl paid for it? He must be _really_ loving him ..."

After making several people walk into walls and doors and causing a rear end collision with forklifts, Lenny is even happier than before.

At the next corner, they run into Burns and Smithers, and Lenny quickly switches off his flashy smile.

"Mr. Leonard, your break is over. Go back to work! You too, Mr. Carlson."

* * *

For a while, everything is great and awesome and super-super. At least for Lenny. Carl does not complain.

Then it is their day off, and Lenny is comforting his ailing Chihuahua, when someone leans on his door bell.

He opens the door and a hand with blood-red painted nails holds a sheet of paper in front of his face.

Lenny stares helplessly at it. "What's that?"

"That's what I want to know from YOU!" Josie hisses.

Lenny takes one step back, so he can read what is printed on the sheet. It looks like a bill. From Dr. Baxter. 1500 Dollars for a gold tooth.

1500? Carl said he paid only 400 …!

"Oh!"

"Yes, 'oh'!" Josie screams. She waves the sheet so aggressively in front of Lenny's face he fears for his eyes and takes some more steps back. Josie follows him into the house. "Explain this to me. Braces for my daughter are too expensive – says Mr. Carlson. To go on a journey, to have the roof repaired, a new dishwasher – too expensive. Says Mr. Carlson. But paying thou!-sand!-five!-hun!-dred! for the stupid gold tooth of his stupid friend? No problem!"

"He told me he paid only 400," Lenny mumbles. He does not dare to open his mouth, because then Josie will see his gold tooth, and then she might choke him on the spot. She is one inch taller than him and has larger muscles.

"WHAAAAAT did you say?!"

"He told me he paid only 400!"

Foxtrot, the Chihuahua, dashes into the bedroom for a nose-dive into the hamper.

"ONLY 400!" Josie screams. "You bachelor guys never know what 400 Dollars mean for a family!"

For twenty more minutes, she demands explanations. Each time Lenny tries to explain that he has no explanations, Josie starts screaming again. Finally she is fed up with this game and marches out of the house, slamming the door.

The echo has not died away when Lenny grabs his cell phone. He is shaking, and so he drops it on the living room rug, and when he picks it up, he drops it again. Finally he manages to press the right keys.

Although it is their day off, Carl is at the nuclear power plant. He could not say 'No' when Smithers asked him to show a group of Chinese businessmen around.

It is always Carl who gets those jobs. Not that Lenny minds.

"Carlson."

"Trouble on the home front, mate."

"Lenny! What happened?"

"Josie was here. With Dr. Baxter's bill."

"Was she very angry?"

"I thought she would kill me. No joke. She stomped into my house and screamed for twenty minutes."

Carl is silent. Lenny hears the well-known power plant noises in the background, and voices chatting in Cantonese. Finally, Carl says, "Thanks for the warning, Lenny. Bye."

* * *

Carl puts away his cell phone. An elbow nudges him.

"Tlouble wis youl wife, huh?" The guy grins from ear to ear. Half of his face is grin.

"Yes, tlouble," Carl says absent-mindedly.

* * *

"Foxtrot!"

Lenny digs the quaking little dog out of the laundry, wraps him into a towel and sits down on the couch with him.

Lenny himself is still shaky.

He feels guilty. Josie is right. Carl should have spent that money for his family. At the same time, Lenny feels damn proud. Realizing he does so increases his guilt, but he cannot help it.

Lenny never thought much about Carl's marital life, because that was not his business. It is just what people do: have a wife, children, a front lawn, a rec room and a boring job. Unless they are a bit crazy, like Lenny himself.

Now Lenny cannot stop fishing bits of information out of his memory and shoving them around like puzzle pieces.

Carl has been married three times. He and his first wife met on a party and then went to more parties together, until one day partying was over, and they realized they had nothing in common. His second wife turned out to be a terrible sponger who did nothing all day but staying in bed, drinking, smoking and eating marshmallows.

Now there is Josie. In four years, Lenny met her a dozen times, the wedding included. She is a tall, beautiful woman. He does not know much about her, only this: She comes from a poor family. She is the oldest of seven sisters. Her father was an alcoholic. She dreamt of going to university, but instead left school early and worked as a checkout girl to support her family. When in a good mood, she is the nicest person in the world. Unfortunately, she is short-tempered, lacks sense of humor and is obsessed with money.

Obsessed with money. A few days ago, she and Carl had a fight because he threw a returnable bottle into the waste bin. Josie dug it out, and when he came home, he found the piece of evidence placed on the kitchen table. He mentioned it towards Lenny the next day after they had a few beers.

Gracie, Josie's twelve-year-old daughter, is the child of an earlier relationship. Carl gets along with her since he discovered the girl is happy when he buys her pink ice cream, pink toy horses and pink clothes.

"I wish it would be that easy with Burns," he once said to Lenny, and they chuckled about the idea of Burns wearing pink clothes.

In the beginning, Josie liked Lenny. Everybody who thinks he is a harmless half-wit likes him. But although she went on greeting him with cheery smiles and was all niceness towards him, he felt that after a while her vague sympathy turned into well-defined dislike.

It is the same with all of Carl's girlfriends and wifes. As soon as they realize Lenny is a permanent institution, they resent him. Must be because he is white. Racism upside down, so to say.

Thanks to Dr. Baxter's bill, Josie now has a reason to hate Lenny openly.

Now Lenny understands why Carl rather hangs out with him than spending time with his family. Why he prefers Moe's dank tavern to his home. Now Lenny understands all those casual remarks about 'trouble at home' and Josie being 'a bit moody'. Carl uses to mention this like it was nothing, and so Lenny always thought it was nothing.

Now his ears are still ringing from Josie being 'moody'.

Lenny always thought Carl was the luckier one of them, because he is great in picking up beautiful women, and because he is so calm.

* * *

At this point, Lenny stops thinking, because fear creeps into his heart. People who think too much are _intellectual_. And that is the same as unpopular.

Carl should be through with the Chinese business men by now. Lenny goes to Moe's, but Carl is not there. Homer is not there. Even Barney is not there. Once again, he tries to recover from alcoholism. And Moe is in a bad mood because of that.

Lenny tries to lift his spirits with a joke. "Moe, I suffer from hypoglycemia. Give me a -"

"From _what_? And what do you want me to do? Shoot a bullet into your head?" Moe reaches for the gun under the counter.

"Just give me a beer," Lenny says hastily.

* * *

Carl is not at Moe's, because this time he does not avoid the storm as long as possible, but races down Evergreen Terrace at 120 mph. He nearly runs over a child with a tricycle, but he is so furious he does not care.

Lenny tried to sound laid-back when called him, but his shaky voice betrayed him.

It is a luck Carl seldom gets into such a mood, because then he could go postal any moment.

When he brakes the car in front of the garage, grit flies against the windows.

* * *

The hammering at the door continues, so they finally stop screaming at each other. Josie puts the vase down she was about to throw at Carl. "If that is Lenny, I'll kick his white ass!" Her voice is husky from screaming. She starts to cough.

Carl steps over the books and broken dishes lying on the floor and throws the door open. Officer Lou and Officer Eddie are standing on the garden path. Behind them, Carl sees the police car parked at the curbside. Some neighbors are standing around on the sidewalk. Gracie, in her pink pajamas and hugging her pink plush unicorn, hides behind Mrs. Wlodarcek. (She climbed out of the bathroom window to get out of the house.)

"Mr. and Mrs. Carlson?" asks Officer Lou. "Your neighbors called us. Would you please lower your screaming a bit?"

"No problem."

Lou peers over Carl's shoulder at Josie. Eddie chews chewing gum.

Josie smiles her nicest smile. "Don't worry, officer. We're just having a little quarrel. Things may got a bit out of hand. You know how it is."

"Do you people think we can leave you alone again?" Lou looks doubtful. He glances at the broken kitchen window and the flour bag lying on the grass.

"Yes. We are calm now. We will talk it over like grown up, sensible human beings."

"Well, okay. Good night." The cops walk slowly back to their car, then drive slowly away.

Meanwhile, Josie spots her daughter. "Gracie! What are you doing out here? In your pajamas? Come back at once!"

After a debate with Mrs. Wlodarcek, she leads the girl to the house.

Carl is walking diagonally over the front lawn while putting on a coat.

"If you go now, you don't need to come back!"

He does not want to come back. When Josie said, _'We will talk it over like grown up, sensible human beings'_, he became afraid for his life.

He switches off his cell phone without looking at it.

* * *

It is only ten o'clock, but Moe's Tavern is closed. This is nothing new. Its opening hours depend on the moods of its owner. Sometimes Moe gets a fit and throws everybody out, and they are lucky when he does not shoot at their tires while they are racing off the parking lot.

"Oh, nuts," Carl says, standing in front of the dark tavern. It starts to rain.

A taxi drives past and stops. One of its doors is opened. "Mr. Carlson! You wanna go make party with us?" shouts a voice with a Cantonese accent.

* * *

They drag him through bars and striptease clubs until his head is spinning. Finally he finds himself again crammed into a taxi with six Chinese guys, who hoot and sing, throw money at each other and spray the windows with champagne.

The taxi stops in front of 'Villa Mara', a large, shabby brothel. Getting out into the cool night air sobers Carl up. He pays the driver by handing money through the window, then waits for the Chinese to climb, crawl and fall out of the car.

A frail, hunchbacked man slinks out of the brothel, his hands buried in his coat pockets and his face hidden in the shade of a basecap. Spotting Carl, he lifts his head. The shimmer of a street light reveals well-known Neanderthal features.

"Uh, Carl. Evenin'. Friends of yours?" He nods towards the Chinese.

"Kinda."

"And where's Lenny?"

Funny how everybody asks him that when he is alone. Or even when he is out and about with Josie and Gracie. The first thing people say when they meet him is, 'Where is Lenny?'

Carl does not answer. He feels for his cell phone in his pocket.

"Uh, okay, not my business." He is sheepish. The best evidence he really had one of his fits earlier this night. "See ya." He walks away.

Four calls since Carl switched his phone off. One from Josie only minutes after he left the house. The others from Lenny. The first exactly at midnight, the next at one o'clock, the third at one thirty.

"You no come with us, Mr. Carlson?"

"No. Have a nice evening!"

"Good night, Mr. Carlson!"

It is so late the traffic lights are dead. Carl walks in the middle of the street. This is easier when you are drunk. You do not bump into houses that often.

It is November. The wind chases dry leaves over the crossroads. In Evergreen Terrace there are still Halloween pumpkins on the doorsteps.

Carl is terribly exhausted.

Egoist. That is what she called him. Repeatedly. Egoist, immature, good for nothing, a failure, a disappointment.

Lenny's tooth was the last straw. The reservoir of seething anger burst. Everything came back. Carl's lack of interest in operas and modern art. His lack of understanding for vital things like not throwing returnable bottles into the waste bin. The lack of family life. The lack of everything. Carl hanging out with Lenny 24/7.

At this point, history repeated itself. 'Hanging out with Lenny 24/7' had been an issue in all his relationships. It used to be mentioned in one breath with 'You never listen to me!', 'Sometimes it feels like you don't love me at all!', and 'You're emotionally absent!'

Carl never thought he was hanging out with Lenny too much, but after so many angry women pointed it out to him, he wonders if there might be some truth in it.

'Hanging out with Lenny' led once again to the second refrain of Josie's song – 'gold tooth' and 'Gracie's braces'. Carl said he never thought braces were too expensive, Gracie just looked fine with her teeth being like they were, that was all. Josie pointed out that was not what he had said back then. He had said they were too expensive. Whereupon Carl said, that might was what he _had_ _said_, but he _had_ _thought_ Gracie looked fine. Whereupon Josie screamed, "Stop talking bullshit!"

Seconds later, they were discussing 'hanging out with Lenny' again.

"... and you are not interested in your daughter at all!"

"She is not my daughter! She is the result of one of your drunken one night stands!"

That was when Josie tore the cuckoo clock off the wall and threw it at Carl, and when Gracie, who sat eavesdropping on the stairs, decided to climb out of the bathroom window.

Josie's eyes nearly popped out of her scull when she screamed, "And what is Lenny? Your son? Your lover? I almost think he is!"

"Now _you_'re talking bullshit!"

"One should think staring at that stupid face eight hours every day at work was enough! But no! You have to go to this so-called tavern together!" Then she got really nasty. She imputed to Lenny he was gay, and he was trying to turn Carl gay, too, by throwing puppy looks at him. "He almost succeeded! Obviously!"

That pissed Carl really off. Like he would turn gay from someone's puppy looks! Anyway, Lenny would not do that. Because Lenny was not gay either!

"Haaah, 'not gay'! You should see how he STARES at you when he thinks no one is watching him! It's DISGUSTING!"

Then Officer Lou hammered at the door, and Carl was glad about it.

* * *

Carl passes his house. All windows are dark. The flour bag is still lying on the front lawn, looking like a dead little animal.

Carl passes Homer's house. There is a bluish light behind the living room window. Someone is watching TV. Probably Homer himself, or his old Dad, who sometimes stays at their place.

Evergreen Terrace is a long street. Carl gets so tired he could lie down on the sidewalk and sleep.

Finally, he reaches Lenny's house. It is dark and quiet, too. When he rings the bell, Lenny's Chihuahua starts yapping hysterically, and Carl hears him jump against the door.

He cannot understand why Lenny is so attached to that critter. It looks like a rat, but yaps, craps and stinks like a dog. Especially when it is wet.

The lights inside go on.

* * *

Lenny flattens his tousled hair with one hand while peeping through the spyhole. He guessed his visitor is Carl, still he prefers to be cautious. It might be Josie, who decided to kill him for good.

A part of the darkness outside moves and turns out to be a black man in a black suit standing on the 'Scrape your shoes' mat. Lenny opens the door.

"Morning, Lenny."

"Come in."

Carl stumbles over Foxtrot, who dances round his feet, yapping three times per second.

Lenny shoves the dog into the kitchen and quickly closes the door.

They look at each other.

Lenny wears a green pajama with a golden crown stitched on the chest pocket. Carl still wears the suit he had to impress the Chinese with. It makes him look like a stranger.

The wardrobe lamp reveals the suit is crumpled, and it is stained with Champagne, Tortilla dip, and ice cream. It is also dusty with flour. Carl's eyes are glassy.

He walks into the living room. "Can I sleep here?"

"Not on my 3000 Dollar leather couch!"

There is almost nothing in the living room but the couch and a very large flat-screen TV set. Lenny's places are always large, empty and painfully clean. He does not keep his acquaintances away from his house actively, but somehow he has few visitors. Even the girls he dates are seldom here. Even Carl.

Carl wonders if Lenny has a guest bed.

It turns out the only place Lenny can offer is the unused side of his large, cozy double bed. And no, this situation is NOT as gay as everybody thinks now.

They were roommates at university. They shared tents on camping trips. They had showers after work (to wash the radioactive stuff off). Therefore, they have seen each other in pajamas, underwear or completely naked hundreds of times, without thinking anything more obscene than 'That guy looks good'.

Anyway, Carl is too exhausted and too plastered to wish for anything else than a place where he can stretch himself out and fall asleep. Lenny is not sober either. Carl noticed the empty whiskey bottle standing on a folded newspaper next to the couch.

Lenny is just helping his best friend in need without thinking twice.

Carl drops his suit on the bedroom floor and crawls into bed in his underwear.

"I must warn you," Lenny says, buried under his blanket already. "I'm a fitful sleeper. All my girlfriends complained."

With good reason. Carl wakes up every ten minutes from Lenny tossing and turning and mumbling in a language that sounds like Babylonian. Carl retreats to the edge of the bed, covering his ears with the pillow.

Geez, was it that bad at university already? Carl cannot remember. Maybe because back then Lenny was partying all night and sleeping all day, while Carl sat in the lectures. (Sleeping there, too. Because he had been at the same parties.)

He wakes up again, because Lenny, lying in the middle of the bed now, kicked his back.

Carl thinks of taking his blanket and moving to that 3000 Dollar couch. No, he is too tired to get up.

Then Lenny, caught in a nightmare, starts to weep, and this is so scary Carl is about to press a pillow on his face. Instead, he wraps Lenny into his blanket to keep him from laying about himself. This helps like a magic spell. Lenny is quiet at once, like his nightmare was switched off. Carl is so relieved he falls asleep the very second, his arm still wrapped around Lenny, holding the blanket together, and his face full of Lenny's hair.

* * *

He wakes up in broad daylight when the garbage collection truck stops in front of the house and makes a hell of a noise with Lenny's garbage cans.

Embarrassed, Carl takes his arm away from Lenny. He dimly remembers what happened last night. He must have been really drunk – he would not have done something looking so gay when sober.

What a luck Lenny still sleeps like a baby, fist to cheek. (Carl does not know Lenny woke up at dawn, found himself in Carl's arms and quickly closed his eyes again.)

Carl has a hangover and a headache. His head feels like a rotting Halloween pumpkin. Still, he cannot go on lying around here. When he gets up, pain splits his brain. "Ouch."

Lenny's medicine cabinet is stuffed with pharmaceuticals with strange, long names. Carl takes the little cardboard boxes out and puzzles them back into the cabinet, and finally brings forward a bottle with a familiar name on it: painkillers. He swallows three of them with water from the tap.

In the kitchen he finds a miffed Chihuahua, who had to spend the night on the bare floor. The dog walks past Carl and into a room, which, as Carl discovers, is empty but for the dog's basket and its toys.

To distract himself from his hangover, Carl makes breakfast. He does not need to hurry. It is a late shift day, and it is only half past nine. Waiting for the coffee to get ready, he even opens one of the tiny cans with dog food.

Foxtrot, hearing that, needs one second to reappear in the kitchen door.

"Here, you little rat-thing."

Still no sound from Lenny. Carl stacks the whole breakfast on a tray, adds two painkillers for Lenny, and carries it into the bedroom.

Lenny yawns and looks at Carl, who is unshaved and still in his underwear. His boxer shorts have red and white stripes like a circus tent.

"Carl, you look like modern art."

"Don't mention modern art, please."

Lenny notices the tray standing on the bed. "Oh! Wow. That's nice of you."

From lying on the bedroom floor, Carl's suit is even more crumpled, and it also got dusty.

"Dust! On my floor!" Lenny gets his psycho gaze and will not calm down until he has mopped up the bedroom. "I'm sorry for this pigsty, Carl!"

"Never mind."

How can someone with such a mania for cleanliness have a dog as pet? A mental image haunts Carl: Lenny running after his dog, picking up its hairs.

Maybe that is the real problem with his girlfriends. They intrude into his house. Into his bedroom. Into his bed. They put things into the wrong places. They loose hairs.

Carl can tell Lenny is not entirely happy about having him in his house. He just suppresses his discomfort for the sake of their friendship.

"I think I go home to get some casual clothes," Carl says.

"I'll come with you," Lenny offers bravely. When they return to Carl's house together, Josie, however furious, will be in minority.

Lenny puts a leash on Foxtrot, and they walk out into the chilly wind.

The gray November clouds pile up at the far end of Evergreen Terrace. Carl's house is still quiet and dark when they reach it. Lenny walks across the front lawn and picks up the flour bag, which is soaked from the rain. "Oh, Carl."

Carl unlocks the door with Lenny standing behind him, who carries the flour bag and Foxtrot, who is too small to walk long distances.

Nobody is home. Gracie's pink jacket is gone from the coat rack and her pink shoes are gone from the shoe rack. Her 'Hello Kitty' backpack is gone, too.

Probably they fled to one of Josie's sisters.

Lenny slowly walks into the living room. It looks like a hand grenade exploded in it. Debris crack under his sneakers. Lenny sadly shakes his head. "Oh, Carl!" He steps over the shattered fish tank and the magazines with suffocated goldfishes between their pages.

Carl stands at the door, turned away from Lenny, and listens to Josie's message on his cell phone. The "squacksquacksquack" of her recorded anger is audible in the whole room.

Carl drops the phone back into his pocket.

Lenny has picked up the shattered cuckoo clock.

"Never mind," Carl says. "I never liked that ugly thing." Then he remembers the clock was Lenny's wedding present.

Lenny is not insulted. He just puts the clock on a chest of drawers and sits down in an easy chair, not caring for the clothes and books crumbling under him. He only keeps his own house clean. In the houses of others, he does not mind the mess. "And now, Carl?"

"Josie had the kindness to tell me I have three days to pack my stuff together and leave. The husband of one of her sisters is a lawyer. Specialized in divorces. Which means they'll fleece me thoroughly. That rabble always sticks together."

"Get your own lawyer, Carl."

"I will."

They go upstairs, so Carl can fetch some clothes from the wardrobe in the bedroom. Lenny stops short in front of Gracie's room. PINK. The walls are PINK. The carpet is PINK. The bed is PINK. The scattered toys are PINK. The books in the PINK bookshelf are PINK. There are posters of manga princesses with PINK hair and PINK eyes and with PINK rainbows bursting from their hands.

Lenny does not mind a bit of pink here and there. He even likes the color. But this is too much – this is bubble gum PINK, spoiled-little-princess PINK.

Carl covers his eyes with his hand and leads him away. "She also paints her toenails pink."

"Eww. Let's go to Moe. He at least does not paint his toenails pink."

"I would not be too sure. He is strange sometimes."

Foxtrot squats in the living room, retching, because he ate the goldfishes, and one of them was too large for the small dog.

"At least the fishes are disposed of," says Carl.

"See? And you told me that dog was good for nothing."

They look at the mess. They look at each other. Lenny opens his arms, and Carl allows himself a weak minute, in which he hugs Lenny and leans on his shoulder.

* * *

They go to Moe for a pre-work beer, and Lenny asks Moe if he paints his toenails pink, and Moe tells him to STFU.

At work, Homer asks them how their day was, and they say "Fine". Then Carl talks about his weird party trip with the Chinese.

When they leave the plant late in the evening, Carl says, "Hollywood?"

Lenny nods.

The place they call 'Hollywood' are the large letters forming the name 'SPRINGFIELD' in imitation of the famous 'HOLLYWOOD' signature. Newspapers described it as 'the most stupid waste of money this town has ever seen'. A winter storm tipped the N over and made it slide into the forest, so now the town's name is misspelled as 'SPRI GFIELD'.

Lenny and Carl buy a case of beer, a package of ice cream and a bag of potato chips at a service station. In the hills, Lenny parks his car in polite distance to the half-legal parking lot where the teenagers make out. "We're out of that age, Carl, aren't we? Hee, hee."

Carl grins and stacks the ice cream on the beer, so he does not have to hold it in his hands while walking uphill on the trail.

They settle down comfortably on the concrete base of the second I. There, they have a magnificent look over the town, which is wedged between the hills like a gigantic chessboard. The night is clear, but windy and warm for this time of year. The turbulent air makes the lights swim and the stars twinkle.

Lenny snatches the chips bag from the top of the stack. "Mhm. Iced potato chips."

They devour the chips and the ice cream, and then Lenny shivers and wraps his arms around his tucked up legs. "That ice cream made me all cold inside."

"Drink a beer, that's a few degrees warmer." Carl hands him a bottle.

Lenny drinks and burps. "Pardon my French."

"You call that French?" Carl downs a bottle. Some moments of tense silence. Then he lets out the loudest and longest burp Lenny ever heard.

Something in the bushes jumps up from its resting place and gallops downhill.

Lenny applauds. "Excellent, my dear sir."

"That felt good!" Carl stretches and throws the bottle after the fleeing animal.

"Hey, Carl, that was a returnable bottle … uh, never mind. Screw the few cents."

Carl looks thoughtful. Then he jumps down to the ground and walks into the bushes. After rummaging around a bit, he comes back and places the bottle next to Lenny.

"Help me up again, Lenny. I'm not twenty any more."

The large concrete block reaches up to his shoulders. Lenny stretches out a hand. Carl scrambles up and stands close to Lenny, catching his breath.

Finally he says, "Lenny, I know you feel guilty because you think it was because of your gold tooth Josie and me had this fight."

"It was, wasn't it?"

"Man, I'm glad. I look forward to living alone. I know for good now I'm no family man. Josie called me an egoist, and she's pretty right."

"Aww, you're not an egoist, Carl."

"Thank you, but you only say that to be nice. In the end, I'm the kind of asshole who never throws his clothes into the hamper, who sits around at home in his underwear and drinks beer from a can, and who never thinks of bringing his woman breakfast … in bed ..." His voice trails off.

"And you don't think you can change?"

"I tried. It drives me nuts. You know, I just want to be me. I'm not perfect. Still, I just want to be me."

Lenny understands, so they talk no more about it.

* * *

Carl spends the night at his house, packing. He is not tired, so he decided to make good use of those quiet hours.


	4. What Happens in Vegas

Marge comes back from changing Maggie's diapers just to hear Lenny telling Homer how Carl found the dead tenant in the first floor.

"That stench in the staircase grew worse each day, and they all complained to Chuck, and he said, yes, yes, something wrong with the pipes, I'll send the plumber guy. But nothing happened. Then that one-legged grandpa came back from hospital and said, 'There's a dead body rotting away in the house. I know that stink from Vietnam. Smelled it often enough. Oh, and my leg stunk like this before they sawed it off. Where is fat, boozy Jenkins? Has anyone seen him lately?' Then the hooker living upstairs from Jenkins said she heard a heavy fall in his flat about two weeks ago, since then she never saw him again. - So Carl shook the door a bit, and it gave way, and he walked in. Man, that place stunk like hell. He told me he nearly vomited from the stink alone. He really vomited when he saw Jenkins. Imagine a 600 pound man lying on his back, with maggots crawling all over him ..."

"Oh!" Marge lifts a hand to her mouth.

"Uh, oh, Marge. That wasn't a nice story."

Lenny looks at little Maggie, who sits on her mother's arm. How much did she understand of his gruesome story? Although she does not speak yet, not a single word, he cannot get rid of the feeling she is much too bright for such a tiny toddler.

Maggie smiles a baby smile at him, that appears to the left and the right of her pacifier, and stretches out her arms. She knows Lenny as one of the friendlier adults. Marge hands her over to him. He balances the little girl standing upright with one foot on each of his thighs. "Hello, Maggie!" She grabs his suspenders. He nudges her nose. "Hello, little lady!"

Marge says, "Hmm, Lenny, it sounds like the neighborhood where Carl lives now is somewhat run-down."

"It's a bit … old-fashioned." Lenny thinks of the burning dumpster and the drunkards in front of the convenience store. Carl told him that store mainly sells alcohol, cigarettes and one-hand reading material. Carl also told him to park his car at the mall and walk the rest of the way. "If you park in my street, the kids will slit your tires and break off your wipers."

"In which quarter is he living?"

"Uh, dunno what's its name."

"Where is it?"

"Uhm, between the mall and the railroad track," Lenny admits.

"That place has no name," Homer says. "Unless you count 'ghetto', 'hell' and 'last exit to Springfield' as names. No wonder there was a dead man lying around. Probably a victim of the drug mafia."

"The doctor said it was cardiac arrest."

"That's what doctors always say in such cases."

"And that's where Carl lives now?" Marge says compassionately. "Whatever his wife reproached him for, taking away so much from him he is forced to live there is too harsh, if you ask me. He is not such a bad man."

"No, it's not because of that. Carl just happened to know the guy who owns the house, and who was looking for a tenant. Carl could move in right away, that was all."

"Is that house habitable at least?"

"Mmhm." Her steady, curious gaze makes Lenny unable to lie.

Maggie feels his discomfort and stretches her arms out to Homer. He picks her up and places her on his lap.

"Let me guess," Marge says. "A ramshackle hut with a draft coming from every window, and rats in the staircase?"

"Something like that, yes." Lenny thinks of the missing handrail and the torn wallpaper in Carl's little attic room.

"And the neighbors having loud fights each night?"

"Most of them live alone, so there is no one to fight with."

"Oh, this is even sadder."

"Carl doesn't mind."

Carl is pretty cool about his new abode. After moving in, he threw a party for his new neighbors (and Lenny), so they could get to know him.

Marge wants to say something more, but the noise from the kitchen increases to an intolerable level. Bart and Lisa are running round the table, screaming, laughing and pushing the chairs. Just when Marge enters the kitchen, something shatters on the floor into thousand pieces.

"Now there's an end of it! Out with you into the garden!"

* * *

Lenny leaves the Simpsons' house feeling he got involved into an unfair bargain. Marge's curiosity is satisfied now – what Lenny got in turn is a bad conscience for talking about his friend behind his back.

Carl is really pretty cool. He never complains. He does not keep it a secret he lives in that ghetto. Still, Lenny hates telling other people about his friend's private matters, thus exposing him to gossip and _pity_.

It was a catch-22. How could he avoid answering Marge's questions without being impolite?

Was there reproach in Maggie's eyes? Or is he making too much of her baby gaze?

* * *

Lenny visits Carl that evening, bringing pizza and salad. The front door of the house is kept open by a wedge to air the staircase, but inside there is no trace of that horrible smell Carl talked of. There is just the usual smell of an old, rotten house.

An official seal is stuck over door and frame of one of the first floor flats.

Lenny walks upstairs and knocks.

"Hi Lenny! Come in."

"Hi Carl! I brought some -"

Something furry gets between Lenny's feet. He stumbles into an extension cord, which wraps itself around his ankles.

"- pizza."

He falls lengthwise on his belly, throwing pizza boxes and plastic dishes into all directions.

"That's nice of you."

"What the hell was that?"

"May I introduce my new roommate to you? Good ol' Jenkins' tomcat. He decided to move in with me. I call him 'Jenkins'."

"He looks like the devil."

The large, almost completely black cat cowers in a corner and gives Lenny a green glare.

Lenny rolls on his back and loosens the pretzel-shaped knot around his ankles.

Carl's new home is sparsely furnished. A mattress, a suitcase, and, as newest addition, a small TV set.

The pizza boxes have landed on the mattress with the pizzas hanging halfway out of them. The dishes have rolled into a corner, leaving a trail of salad, but most of it is still inside them.

Lenny and Carl sit down on the mattress. Carl mutes the TV, but does not switch it off, because it is the only source of light.

"Chuck is finally back from Shelbyville." (Chuck is Carl's landlord.)

"And what did he say?"

"He was pissed off because Jenkins' flat has to be completely renovated. - Oh, by the way, guess what he saw in Shelbyville. The circus your wife works at."

"Hmm." Lenny crosses his arms over his lap.

Only few people know he is married for six years.

The last time he saw his wife was five years, eleven months and three weeks ago, when he looked out of the hospital window and spotted her marching towards the entrance. He clung to Dr. Hibbert. "Don't let her in! Please! Tell her I'm dead!"

Lenny's broken ribs and his sprained wrist healed, but he was left with a deep distrust towards women who work at circuses.

He made a few feeble attempts to trace his wife and get divorced from her, but no 'Circus Manoli' was to be found in any yellow pages or whatever. It had not even a web page. So Lenny shrugged and said to Carl, "Meh, I don't plan to get married again anyway."

* * *

"Now you can finally rule it off."

"Yeah." Lenny does not sound too thrilled.

"What about driving to Shelbyville right after work tomorrow?"

"Okay."

* * *

They take Carl's car, and Carl drives.

They find the circus on the outskirts, were its few wagons are scattered over a piece of waste land. From their sides greets the company logo with the grimace of a clown, who looks like he came alive at night and ate children.

"Man, that circus is even seedier than it was six years ago," Lenny says.

"And probably not wholly legal. I mean, look at that lion cage."

The cage has the floor space of a bathtub and looks like it could fall to pieces any moment. The lion it contains is mangy and haggard.

The tent, not larger than a house, is halfway set up – or halfway taken down. No soul is to be seen, except a dromedary and a donkey tied to a tree.

"Helloooo?!"

"Anybody here?"

They walk from one wagon to the other and knock at the doors. Nothing.

"Shit." Lenny kicks a soda can.

The next two hours they sit in the car and wait. Dusk sets in.

"Boring!" Lenny laments.

"Look, the dromedary is crapping."

"Whoa. A nice way to spend one's well-earned leisure time! Come on, Carl. Let's drive home. I really do not plan to marry again."

"Oh, I said that two times, and … Someone's coming."

Two men are walking up the street. One of them is growth-restricted, the other one a muscular fellow with a Nietzschean mustache, who wears a sleeveless shirt in spite of the cold.

"Hey, I know them, Carl. Lino the clown and Fritz the fire-eater."

The circus guys stop short when Lenny and Carl jump out of the car and wave their arms. "Wait a minute!"

"No comment!" snaps the growth-restricted man. "I'm sick of it! Leave me in peace!"

His companion eyeballs Lenny. "Lino, wait. They're not from the police. - I know you. I've seen you somewhere."

"My name is Lenny Leonard, and ..."

"I know! You're the guy Franny had a fling with in Springfield, Massachusetts. Or was it Springfield, Oregon? No, it was Springfield, Illinois!"

"It was the Springfield ten miles from here," Carl says.

"Oh, right, _that_ Springfield."

"And what do you want?" asks Lino a little less unfriendly. "If you yearn for Franny, you're too late. She left us four years ago."

"Oh. Do you happen to know where she is?"

"You're yearning that much for her?"

Lino and Fritz exchange a meaningful look.

"Actually, the problem is, for almost six years I'm trying to trace her, so we can get divorced."

Lino and Fritz exchange another look, while a mixture of alarm and amusement dawns on their faces.

"Wait a second. You and Franny got married? And you _are still married_?" Fritz begins to chuckle.

Lino starts laughing hysterically.

"That's not funny!" Lenny thinks of his broken ribs.

"Okay, we can help you," Lino manages to say. "She" - he makes the quotation mark gesture with both hands - "is in Las Vegas. Works as a security guard in some gambling den. Ha ha ha. But be warned. If you, ha ha ha, if you find … her" - again the gesture - "you're in for a little surprise. Haaaa ha ha ha!" He laughs so hard he doubles over.

Fritz is still chuckling. "What the clown and manager in personal union wants to tell you is, 'Francesca' now calls herself, pardon, _him_self, 'Frank'. You will probably not recognize her when you see her, pardon, _him_. All the hormones she threw in changed her a bit. She looks like a cupboard with a suit strapped over it. And she has a brush cut now."

"Tell him about her tits," gasps Lino, tears streaming over his face.

"Oh, yeah, she had her tits cut off. Not sure if they attached an artificial dick to her yet."

Lenny stands on the sidewalk, his mouth open, his arms hanging down.

"Thanks for the information," Carl says politely.

* * *

Back in the car, Carl says, "I don't like those guys. They're silly. Probably also a bit insane." He turns to Lenny and is about to say something more, but Lenny hisses, "Crack _one_ joke, and I'll kill you, Carlson!"

"I wasn't about to crack a joke. I just wanted to say, let's go to Vegas and find your … husband."

Lenny glares at him, not sure if that was a joke or not.

* * *

Back in Springfield, Carl drives straight to Moe's.

When Lenny gets out of the car in front of the little, dusky pink building, the tension which has gotten to him for hours finally dissolves.

"Lenny! Carl! Where have you been?" asks Homer.

"Nowhere."

"And what have you done?"

"Nothing."

"All right."

They sit around and drink beer until ten o'clock. Then Marge marches in and patiently, but determined cajoles Homer into coming home with her. He grumbles like a child. "... but I'm not tired yet!" Moe stealthily moves closer and ogles Marge's cleavage.

Finally a sulky Homer shambles towards the door, followed by his wife. She smiles at Lenny and Carl. "You two guys should go home, too. Work starts at six tomorrow morning!"

"Yes, Marge."

"We'll keep it in mind."

The door shuts. Lenny says, "A toast on living alone. No one forces us to go to work well-rested and without a hangover."

"And offers Moe another cleavage to ogle," Carl adds.

Moe blushes. "Mind your own shit!" he mumbles while turning away and fiercely rubbing Homer's beer mug with his rag.

Carl goes to the toilet. A few moments later, Lenny follows.

"Lenny, do you always have to come in while I'm peeing?"

Lenny leans against the radiator and lights a cigarette. He clumsily squeezes the packet into his shirt pocket before he inhales. He inhales too quickly and too deeply, and it makes him cough.

Lenny rarely smokes. He basically quit it long ago, but reverts to it when he is stressed.

"Carl, I have flashbacks. Flashbacks. All the time." His speech is slurred, because he drank more than usual on a workday night. He stares upwards to the cobwebs under the ceiling.

"Flashbacks?" Carl gets his clothes back in order.

"That's what happens to traumatized people."

Lenny looks so desperate, so shaken to the core, Carl suddenly feels genuine compassion. Instead of saying, 'Don't be silly', he says, "Well, if my honeymoon ended with broken ribs, I might be traumatized, too."

"Do you know what's worse, Carl? She thought all the time she was a man when we – uh."

"But you thought she was a woman."

"I feel betrayed. Exploited."

"It's a bit awkward, yes, but that's life, Lenny. Why don't you see it as interesting experience, huh?" Carl puts his hand on Lenny's shoulder and maneuvers him away from the boiling radiator. Moe turns it up to the highest level especially for his favorite customer. Barney likes the restroom well-tempered when he goes to have a puke.

Carl does not really understand why Lenny is so shocked. He himself would have laughed and made a joke like, 'For a man, she had a nice rack'.

He would never say so, but he suspects Lenny's own identity to be not hundred per cent male either. One should think this crazy marriage would indeed be an interesting experience for him, minus the broken ribs, of course. Instead, he is making a fuss.

Lenny sighs. "Well, I'll go to Vegas and try to trace her for good. Or him. Whatever. Rather an end with terror than terror without end, as the philosophers say." He smiles feebly.

"I'll come with you."

"Hmm, okay. We have to ask Smithers for time off. Do you think three or four days are enough? That's all I have left for this year."

"I have only one left, but I'll take leave without pay."

"If he lets both of us go, that is. He won't be too happy about it."

"Don't worry, we'll get it done. We also have to talk to Homer. He has to hold the fort ..."

Moe, who hears them talking in low voices so he cannot understand them, screams from behind his counter, "Hey, what are you doing there in the john? What's all that mumble about?"

* * *

Smithers is indeed not happy. Christmas is approaching. Everybody wants leave, and if they do not get leave, they get the flu. At the same time, the nuclear power plant operates on maximum output to feed a town that is wrapped into chains of lights up to the roof ridges. A dangerous situation for the 'rotten piece of steampunk', as the plant is lovingly called by the ones who work there. The leakages and explosions will not end. Smithers needs all personnel.

And now there are those two dunces with their "pressing family matters".

"What do you think this is, gentlemen? A nuclear power plant? Or a pigeonry, where everybody can fly in and out when it's convenient for him?"

Lenny and Carl finally agree to work during the Christmas holidays in exchange for a few days leave now. As Carl no longer has a family, he no longer has a reason to stay at home at Christmas. And Lenny has a reason to go to work when Carl is there.

"And when can I expect you back?"

"In two or three days."

"Nice," Smithers says sourly. "Looks like I have to call that temp agency again."

* * *

Smithers hopes Mr. Burns is too busy with hating Christmas to notice the absence of his employees. That would only lead to awkward questions and reproaches for Smithers not being able to say 'no'.

* * *

And so, on a clear, cold day, Lenny and Carl set out on a journey across the USA, with the lights of Las Vegas awaiting them behind the horizon.

As soon as they leave Springfield, Carl turns up the radio and puts the pedal to the metal, grinning at Lenny.

This trip is just what he needs. Getting away from his shabby bachelor flat that smells of socks, and from the official letters awaiting him in his letterbox. 'Love letters from my wife', he calls them.

Lenny is less in party mood. He is not looking forward to seeing that rib-breaking machine again. The more after learning that said machine grew even bigger and stronger than it was already. But he shoves those thoughts aside. It will be early enough to be afraid when they reach Las Vegas. For the moment, he enjoys the drive through the desert, and being alone with Carl.

On such occasions Carl is nicest. He talks much more to Lenny when no one else is around. He cuts out his usual sarcasm. He smiles at Lenny, he hands him things without being asked (like he could read Lenny's mind), and when he is in his best mood, he pats Lenny's shoulder or rubs his back, or touches him otherwise in a light, playful way.

Lenny learned to be happy and not to show it.

He also learned to be disappointed and not to show it when the time alone together lasted too long and Carl's mood tilts over. Sooner or later he gets annoyed and becomes obnoxious.

Well, to admit it, Lenny himself does not want to be alone with Carl all the time. After a while he longs for the company of Homer, or of Moe, or just whomever.

* * *

They take turns in driving, with a break every two hours, to walk around and stretch.

Finally they reach Las Vegas. And of course things get complicated.

It starts with a bum jumping in front of their car, waving a cardboard with 'DOOMSDAY IS COMING' written on it. Lenny stands on the brake. Carl pours the apple juice he was about to drink into his collar. The bum gets knocked over, but crawls away unhurt and picks up his cardboard again.

Lenny rolls down the window. "Hey, you dipshit! Piss off, or it will be _your personal_ doomsday!" The bum presents his middle finger and shuffles towards a pedestrian refuge island. Lenny drives on, mumbling angrily.

Carl cleans away the apple juice. "Look at me, Lenny. I'm a drooling old man. I need a feeding cup." He laughs.

"That asshole will soon need a feeding cup if he goes on jumping in front of cars," Lenny says, still angry.

Then the myriads of flickering lights confuse him so much he cannot go on driving. He stops at the roadside. "Carl, do me a favor and take the driver's seat!" he pleads with a whiny voice. "I'm afraid I'll kill us both if I have a seizure!"

"Okay." Carl loosens his seatbelt.

Lenny gets out of the car to walk around it and nearly stumbles in front of a truck. It blows its horn loudly. "Oh, my," Lenny gasps when crawling back into the car on the passenger's side.

He tries to be patient and brave, but cannot help wriggling uncomfortably in his seat as it gets darker outside and the lights, in contrast, get more and more lurid. Finally he covers his eyes with his hands.

"That bad?" asks Carl.

"Oh man," Lenny groans. "Carl, can we stop somewhere, so I can buy sunglasses, or at least a basecap or something?"

Carl bends the sunshade on Lenny's side down. "What's up with you, mate? We've been to Vegas before, and it didn't mean trouble to you."

"It did. But not so much." Lenny glances through his fingers and quickly closes his eyes again. "Ewww. You know, my eyes are sensitive. It gets worse with age, I'm afraid."

Carl is in such a splendid mood he jokes, "You're developing super powers, that's what's going on. Just wait, soon you'll be able to see ultra violet light, or x-rays."

"Oh, great. Then I can see through girl's clothes."

Carl laughs, because he is amused about this nuclear physicist who thinks you can see through girl's clothes with x-rays.

* * *

He leaves Lenny at the darkest spot he can find: a small park, where Lenny sits down next to a water basin.

Carl comes back with sunglasses and a basecap.

"Now the lights look so dim I don't mind them any more!" Lenny says happily and walks into a bush. "Oops. But I cannot see much else."

Carl links arms with him. "May I have the pleasure?"

And this is the beginning of a quest that will end with sore feet and upset stomachs. But one thing after the other.

Lino the manager/clown gave Lenny a piece of paper on which he had scribbled what he thought was the address of Franny's place of work. The house number is missing, and he was not sure about the spelling of the street's name either.

Lenny and Carl discovered a street with a similar name on a map of Las Vegas. It is in a comparatively shabby district of the flashing city, and lined by shabby gambling dens, of which none bears the name written on that piece of paper.

So they walk into one den after the other and ask for 'Automatic Play & Fun', or Francesca a. k. a. Frank Leonard, or Francesca a. k. a. Frank Garcia, in case Lenny's husband decided to use his maiden name.

Heads are shaken. Finally they learn there really had been a gambling den named 'Automatic Play & Fun' , but it was closed.

Luckily, a regular overhears their discussion with the supervisor and leaves his one-armed bandit to lead them to another den, where a former employee from 'Automatic Play & Fun' works. It turns out she does not work there any more, because she got pregnant. The grumpy manager will not give Lenny and Carl her phone number. They ask the other employees. One girl finally spends her break with phoning up her former co-worker, who calls Lenny back twenty minutes later after herself phoning up a former co-worker, who knew Frank Garcia better than herself. She tells Lenny of a pub, where Frank allegedly works as a barkeeper now.

They find the pub, but there is no Frank. He quitted this job long time ago. No one of the staff knows where he is.

"He got along quite well with some of our guests," the new barkeeper says. "Just wait a while, maybe one of them drops in tonight."

Carl sits down at the counter. Lenny sighs and climbs on the barstool next to him, running his hands through his hair.

"Why don't you guys look up your friend in the phone book, or google him, or something," asks the barkeeper.

"Guess what we did. Guess what didn't help!"

To speed this tedious part of the story up: Lenny and Carl, being tired and frustrated already, drink a lot while waiting for Frank's acquaintances. Therefore, when looking back later, they will be unable to put things into a chronological order after leaving the pub in company of some 'Gary', who finally showed up.

The next hours are a crazy nightmare. Following hints, Lenny and Carl meet with people who have nothing than more hints, which send them on a meandering trip through the city, crossing The Strip again and again. Each time they think they have caught up with him, 'Flighty Frank', as Lenny nick-names him, vanishes again.

"I feel like Alice in Wonderland, chasing the White Rabbit!"

Carl observes the places they visit on Frank's tracks get more and more posh. Finally they find themselves in a restaurant on the top floor of a skyscraper, where Frank was allegedly spotted preparing sushi. They catch a glimpse of a room with a giant fish tank in the middle and more fish tanks along the walls. In the bluish light, which reminds of a nuclear reactor, tuxedo-clad gentlemen and ladies in décolleté evening dresses move around like ghosts from the Titanic.

A waiter steps discreetly in Lenny's and Carl's way. "Good evening, gentlemen." He eyes Lenny up and down. "This is a fashionable basecap you are wearing. Wonderful bright colors. Oh, and the price tag is still attached to it, as I see. Those suspenders are very fashionable, too. I am sure, at the McDonald's down the street they will be glad to welcome you as guests."

"Huh?" Lenny did not grasp all connotations and asks for clarification.

"Will the gentlemen accompany me to the elevator, please?"

Carl considers ramming his fist into the waiter's stomach, but knowing this would get them into more trouble than it is worth, he does not.

"Hey! We wanted -" Lenny says, but the elevator doors are closing already.

"Asshole," Carl says, and Lenny kicks the wall.

They drink some more to get over the shock. Then they decide to return to the restaurant dressed up so elegantly the waiter will not _dare_ to speak to them again.

They walk in the middle of the street, which is crowded with pedestrians of all races and classes. Lenny forgot to put on his sunglasses, but he is so plastered he does not mind the lights filling his eyes any more. They scatter into more lights and flow back together. The whole street is a river of orange light with jewels on the shores. As Christmas is approaching, there is a Christmas tree in a little square, thirty feet tall and blazing like it was on fire. Next to it, an old man plays a saxophone. Single, clear notes dance over the crowd and drift upwards to the night sky.

Lenny suddenly stops in front of a large window. "Those are posh clothes!"

"They'll do." Carl puts a hand on Lenny's shoulder, and they walk in through a door which is an emeticly kitschy reproduction of Heaven's Gate.

Inside the shop, they giggle about the weird costumes hanging between the elegant suits and dresses. "Carl, what about going as SpongeBob and Patrick?" Lenny screams, holding up something yellow and something pink.

Carl smiles. "That would teach this waiter a lesson."

Lenny laughs so much he falls between the suits on a clothes stand. Discovering they are Elvis costumes in all sizes, he picks one and walks into the changing cubicle.

Carl is really impressed when his friend comes back. "Elvis must have designed this costume just for you."

"Did he?" Lenny admires himself in a wall-sized mirror.

Passing Grimm's fairy tales, they enter the Star Trek department. Carl dresses up as Commander Whorf. Lenny ogles a Commander Data costume, but then sticks to Elvis.

"Both of you look really good!" says the salesman who started following them around with a warm-hearted smile. "Those costumes fit to each of you. It's a pity they don't fit to each other."

"Does that matter?" Lenny looks at him with the naive, trustful eyes of a child. (He is really very plastered.)

"No. If you two feel okay with it, it doesn't. Just today we had customers who wanted to go as Kermit and Miss Piggy."

"Some people like weird things, don't they!"

"Hmm, what we really want is something more classic," Carl says.

"Yes, something to go to a posh restaurant with," Lenny adds.

"Oh, we will surely find something you'll like."

Lenny is reluctant to part from his Elvis costume, but the friendly salesman brings him a white suit that bears some similarity to it. Carl settles for a black suit with something tiny and glittering about the lapels. In Springfield he would stand out like a peacock in a chicken run with it, but for Las Vegas it is decent and modest.

"Looks good!" Lenny says.

They leave the shop carrying their old clothes in the shop's glossy paper bags.

"Much luck to you!" The salesman smiles even more warm-hearted and blushes. "Have a nice life!"

"We will!" Carl says with a grin.

Lenny knits his eyebrows, wondering if the salesman is drunk, too.

* * *

The same waiter steps in their way.

"Look who came back from the grave," he says. "Elvis Presley and" - he looks at Carl - "Michael Jackson. Shedding all his plastic surgeries along the way."

"Still not posh enough?" Carl asks.

Lenny glares at the waiter. "Okay, Mister Blasé. Either you let us in, or you fetch your manager."

The waiter decides with a sigh they are posh enough and leads them to a table, where he leaves them alone.

"Carl, is there a price tag hanging from my clothes?"

"Yes, but with a posh price on it."

Lenny feels for the tag, finds it and yanks it off. Crumpling it in his hand, he says, "Michael Jackson looked better when he was black."

"But when he became thin and white he looked almost angelic."

Fishes are soaring around them. Fish tanks on three sides of their table separate them from the other guests with walls of blue water. The longer they sit there, the more surreal the place becomes. They watch a little turtle spin downwards and scratch in the sand.

"That's the food. I know this kind of restaurant. You can choose one of the beasts in the tank, and they cook it for you," Carl says.

It turns out the turtle is too young to be eaten. But there is other delicious stuff.

They are hungry after so many hours of driving and walking around, and so many disappointments. So they wolf down a hearty meal of several courses, washing it down with lots of rosé wine. After that, they feel great. Until the waiter presents the bill.

"Oh!" Lenny says, looking at it.

"Hmm," Carl says, looking at it, too.

The waiter waits for them to decide who pays.

"Fifty-fifty." Carl gets out his wallet. "Okay, Lenny?"

"Yeah."

After the waiter is gone, Lenny whispers, "Oh man, for that money we could have dined at Krustyburger's for one year, and Krustyburger's isn't cheap! Maybe we should have gone to a place that was a little less posh. Why did we come here at all? Oh, right, because of that waiter."

"Frank," Carl reminds him.

Lenny looks blank.

"Your, uh, spouse."

"Oh, uh, seems like I forgot that. - And now?"

"Over there is the kitchen. Let's stroll in and ask the staff."

They find themselves surrounded by steam, noise and dazzling white tiles. Everybody is in a terrible hurry. Lenny and Carl scream, "Hello, we want to ask you a question!" at people who push them out of the way.

"Guests are not supposed to come in here!" a cook informs them.

"We are looking for someone who works here! Please! It is important!"

No one in this kitchen has the slightest idea who Frank or Francesca Leonard or Garcia is.

Lenny and Carl turn to the door just when their friend, the blasé waiter, is about to leave the kitchen balancing three dinner trays. Even Lenny cannot tell if it happens on purpose. Carl's elbow hits the waiter and makes him spin round his longitudinal axis, trays, dishes, cutlery, glasses and their expensive contents scattering and smashing all around him.

The waiter freezes in the middle of the mess and turns pale.

"Excuse me," Carl says. "I'm very sorry."

He grabs Lenny's arm, and they run.

In the elevator they high-five with both hands, hop around like mad, and high-five again, laughing all the time.

"Carl, that was great!"

"Hah! He got what he deserved!"

It is a large elevator. Each of its walls is a mirror behind frosted glass, reflecting its passengers as shadows. Thin green neon tubes in the corners shed an unearthly light. On the dive downwards from the 24th floor gravity gets partially neutralized. The tingling sensation caused by this adds itself to the tipsiness caused by the rosé wine.

They dance to the music coming from the ceiling, picking up the refrain and singing along.

_Scientific, so scientific – scientific, so scientific - but you were walking on glass ..._

Carl has one arm wrapped around Lenny's shoulders. He also wraps his other arm around him, pulling him closer. Lenny is bewildered by this sudden geniality, but enjoys it nevertheless and returns the embrace by resting his hands on Carl's back.

The floors rush by. Carl is just standing there, one of the neon tubes behind him, holding Lenny. Lenny looks over his shoulder at their reflections, which merge into a dim, blurry yin and yang. Carl does nothing and says nothing.

Lenny looks at him. They are of the same height and stand eye to eye. Lenny meets that space gaze he has seen only a few times, but remembers well.

Carl is not tipsy. He is intoxicated.

It takes a lot to make Carl intoxicated. He drinks and drinks, and everybody admires him for absorbing so much without effect. Then he drinks a little more, and from one moment to the other he is very, very drunk, although he still seems sober on the first look. You can only tell his state from him slightly slurring his speech and from the goofy things he suddenly does without a reason.

Panic washes over Lenny. "Carl! What … is this …"

The elevator slows to a halt. The doors open with a 'bing!', and people come in. Seeing two men embracing each other, they politely avert their eyes and turn their backs, quietly talking in German.

Carl loosens his grip and leans against the mirror-wall, his hands behind his back. Lenny leans next to him.

Everybody gets out at the first floor. Lenny and Carl walk to the main entrance.

"_Schräge Vögel_," someone whispers.

"_Schwul, aber so was von!_"

"_Das ist Las Vegas ..._"

* * *

That rosé wine is malicious. Lenny is intoxicated, too, and suddenly his body fights against the poison. He feels sicker with every step, and soon his only hope is to make it to the entrance. He looks at Carl. Carl is watching him while wrestling with his own intoxication.

Outside, Lenny clings to a potted palm tree and augments its soil with his expensive dinner. Carl sits down on the thick red carpet clipped to the steps and buries his face in his hands.

Lenny is shaking so violently he makes the palm tree shake with him.

"Do you need help?" asks one of the uniformed servants guarding the revolving door.

Lenny presses a hanky to his mouth and runs back into the building, where he locks himself into the wheelchair accessible toilet.

After ten minutes, Carl knocks. "Lenny? Let me in. I'm standing around here in the lobby, and everybody gives me funny looks."

Lenny opens the door. "Okay. If you don't mind watching me retching my guts out." He looks pathetically sick.

"Retching your guts out? That sounds so Itchy and Scratchy. Or should I say, Itchy and Scratchy and Retchy?" Carl sits down on the floor, leaning against the wall.

"Ha, ha. You're _so_ funny, Mr. Carlson."

"I should sell the idea to 20th Century Fox."

"They're not interested in fan-made crap."

"Lenny, I don't want to urge you, but there's a guy in a wheelchair in the lobby, observing this toilet like a cat would a mouse hole."

"To hell with him!" Lenny groans. He kneels down in front of the toilet like it was an altar. "Carl, I feel really sick! Do you always have to muck me about when I'm weakest?"

Carl gives in. "To be honest, you look like you're dying, mate. I don't feel too well either. It's just that I cannot turn pale, therefore it's not so obvious."

"I noticed," Lenny says and starts retching again.

* * *

It takes him forty-five minutes until he dares to leave the toilet.

They pass the man in the wheelchair, who growls, "No, I will _not_ ask you damn faggots what you did in there!"

"You're mistaken, mister," Carl says.

Lenny insists on walking to the nearest hotel instead of driving, because it is Carl's car, and Lenny does not want to ruin Carl's new seat covers.

It is a large hotel, with endless corridors. Carl cannot concentrate anymore and keeps forgetting the number of their room, so he has to look it up on the tag attached to the key again and again.

"Hurry up, man!" Lenny insists.

Finally Carl finds the room and unlocks the door. Lenny pushes him out of the way and dashes into the bathroom.

"Oh, my," Carl says, standing in the bathroom door. "Here." He switches on the light. "Should be easier this way." Then he collapses on the bed.

* * *

It is morning already when they check in. Men in reflecting vests are cleaning the streets and emptying the waste bins.

At noon, Lenny wakes up and finds himself lying over the toilet. The bathroom light is still burning. Carl is sprawled on the bed.

"Carl." Lenny shakes him gently.

"Ouch!" He opens his eyes and quickly closes them again. The light coming in through the window is terribly bright. His head hurts. He grabs a cool end of the blanket and presses it to his forehead.

Lenny however is weak and lacks appetite, but is comparatively well. "What a luck I spewed all the junk out. So it doesn't have to go through my kidneys."

"Don't talk so loud!" Carl pulls the pillow over his head.

Lenny closes the curtains and leaves a glass of water and some headache pills on the bedside table. Then he fetches their suitcases from their car and puts them down on the floor. After that, he hangs a 'DO NOT DISTURB' sign at the door handle and leaves his friend alone to go for a walk.

It is mild and sunny outside. It feels like spring. Lenny walks through a row of connected parks, his hands in his pockets, and dreamily watches the enamored couples passing by.

In the evening, Carl is able to stand upright and keep down a bowl of soup, which he equates with 'being fit and healthy again'.

Lenny sits cross-legged on his bed. "Hmm, Carl, did we find Frank yesterday? I can't remember."

"Lenny, to be honest, I think we lost his track long before we went into that restaurant. Most of those people took us for a ride, because they thought we were some stupid redneck morons."

That is exactly what Lenny suspected, but would not have admitted even to himself. He sighs. "Well, Carl, it looks like I won't get divorced."

"Do you know what we'll do?" Carl comes back from the bathroom, smelling of the hotel's violet soap and wearing the suit he bought yesterday. "Have bills printed and stick them to every lamp post along The Strip. We can also ask the newspapers for help. And don't forget the internet."

Lenny smiles.

Carl picks up Lenny's sunglasses from the windowsill and puts them on. "And now we go and play poker. I'll win a million bucks, and then we'll hire a private investigator, who will find your Frank and drag him to Springfield."

Lenny smiles even more. This is going to be interesting.

* * *

There is a large casino on the first floor of the hotel. Carl joins one of the poker games. Lenny tries his luck, too, but soon drops out and loiters around in the background with a drink, watching Carl.

Carl is really good at poker. Not knowing him you would not guess the same man spent most of the day lying on his bed with a hangover. He still suffers from a headache and nausea, but he is as cool as an iceberg.

It has got something to do with him being black. Lenny remembers him saying last night, _I can't turn pale, therefore it's not so obvious_. Carl often told him that he, Lenny, was an open book to him compared to his black acquaintances. "I can see from three hundred feet away when you're blushing. It's fascinating." Lenny is not happy about being readable that easy, and about being at such a disadvantage. It is like being friends with a space alien.

He changes a ten dollar bill into quarters and saunters over to the one armed bandits. Halfheartedly he throws the coins into one of the machines. He has done that a few times, when it happens: _bing – bing - bing – JACKPOT_! Coins gush out of the machine and pile up around Lenny's feet.

"Whooo! Whee-hee!"

His luck does not last long. An old man with a nasty grin starts shoveling the coins into his jacket pockets.

"Hey! Hands off!"

Two ruffians coming from the other side follow the example of venerable old age.

"That's my jackpot!" Lenny screams.

More people become attentive. Seeing it is an unfair many-versus-one situation, they rush over to grab their share.

"Will you stop this!" Lenny gets really angry now and starts pushing people away. They push back. He kicks and boxes, and then bites an arm that wraps itself around his face. A flat hand hits him between the shoulder blades. He crashes into one of the machines. Through a galaxy of contorted stars he sees the man towering over him. Carl comes running into the aisle and drags the man away from Lenny.

Hate-filled, yellow eyes stare at him. "Mind your own business, you bl**dy n*gger!"

"Okay." Carl floors the man with a hook to the chin. Lenny grabs a chair and is about to give his attacker a piece of his mind. That moment two security guards turn round the corner. They identify Carl and Lenny as the mischief-makers, and each of them grabs one of them at the collar.

"You got the wrong ones!" Carl fights against iron-strong hands that strangle him. "Those people are stealing my friend's jackpot!"

"My eyyyyye! I'm getting blood into iiiiit!"

The sound of Lenny's voice makes the security guard who holds Carl down stop short.

"Lenny!"

Lenny stares into a flat, freckled, and faintly familiar face. "F-F-Francesca?!"

"Frank. Her name's Frank now," Carl reminds him.

"Man, Lenny, is that you? That giggling loon of a doctor told me you're dead!"

"I resurrected! Being dead was too boring!" Lenny screams angrily. Frank's co-worker is still choking him.

"But he'll bleed to death again if you don't put something on his wound," Carl says.

Lenny wipes his eye, and the blood sticks to his hands and drops on the wildly patterned carpet.

"Sasha, bring him to the sick room," Frank says.

* * *

Half an hour later Lenny and Carl sit at a table hidden in a corner with free drinks in front of them. Lenny has a thick plaster on his forehead. Carl is rubbing his neck.

The manager approaches them and puts an envelope on the table. "We could retrieve most of your jackpot, Mr. Leonard."

Lenny peeps into the envelope. It is filled with hundred dollar bills. He smiles at Carl. Carl smiles back and pats his chest. The rustling of many bills tucked away under his jacket can be heard: his poker winnings.

"Everybody who was caught stealing your money was banned from the premises. Again, we are sorry for what happened."

"Aww, we got off lightly," Lenny says.

When the manager is gone, Frank sidles up to them. "Uhm, hi, Lenny."

"Hi."

"May I sit down?"

"Fine."

Carl says, "It's a luck we met you. We were searching the whole city for you."

"Oh, really? What a coincidence. Uh, Lenny, I was thinking a lot about you lately. I owe you some excuses. But I was too much of a coward to contact you. I thought you might be … shocked. Errm."

"Naah, I'm not," Lenny says, poking the ice cubes in his glass with his drinking straw.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you were," Frank says. "Uhm. This isn't easy for me either. It never has been. I'm really sorry I hurt you. You know, I was in the middle of an identity crisis. Didn't know who or what I was. It drove me mad."

"Don't worry, it wasn't so bad."

"Not so bad?" Carl says. "Listen, mister, whatever you did to him – he never told me, and I'm his best friend – whatever it was, it broke two of his ribs."

Frank is honestly shocked. "Really? Oh, Lenny, I'm sorry. Man, I'm sorry!"

"Okay," Lenny says, "let's not talk about this any more. Uh, F-Frank, the reason why Carl and me came here and searched for you was, uh, after considering it for a long time, I thought we might get, uuh, divorced."

"Yeah, I understand that. Can we meet tomorrow? Were do you stay?"

Lenny points upwards. "Tenth floor."

* * *

Lenny is too wired to sleep and Carl has slept all day, so they spend the rest of the evening watching a show. "We cannot spend time at Vegas without having some fun!" Carl points out. "Sophisticated fun. As we are adults now."

The show is titled 'Babylon'. It is a three-hour-long circus performance reviving ancient dramas with much fireworks, artificial fog and living snakes.

Leaving the building, Lenny smiles and says, "Great."

They spend some minutes watching a magician performing his tricks on the sidewalk and surprising the passers-by.

Lenny yawns. "Let's ride the bus."

"Back to the hotel?"

"No, just any bus, going anywhere. I'm in the mood to ride around."

"Okay."

So they enter the next double decker bus and take seats on the upper deck.

"Frank is much nicer now than he was as a woman. Don't you think so, Carl?" Lenny says, stretching his arms over his head and his legs under the seat in front of him.

"I'm not so sure." Carl dislikes something about Frank. No, it is not him being transgendered, Carl has no problem with that. It is something in his personality.

Frank still having a crush on Lenny does not help.

Lenny did not notice. Carl did.

The seats are comfortable. The air-conditioned warmth is soporific. The bus drives smoothly and silently through the glittering city.

Lenny looks out of the window at the buildings drifting by, at all the cars, trees, signs, bridges and all the people, with an absent-minded, happy gaze. This aimless bus ride amuses him as much as the amazing show he has just seen, all those singers with their magnificent voices and those artists with their feats, into which they had put so much hard work.

Well, Carl watched his sometimes slightly crazy friend sitting in a sandbox with his two-year-old niece, and it was him who had more fun. Lenny also has a collection of toys somewhere in his empty house, and even Carl does not know for sure what he is doing with them.

Lenny falls asleep while Carl plays Solitaire on his iPod.

They wake up when the bus is standing on the depot's parking lot and the bus driver pokes them with a broomstick.

"If you bums had a job, you could afford a home!"

Carl picks up his iPod that is lying between his feet.

Lenny throws a hundred dollar bill into the bus driver's face. "For you."

They high-five while walking over the huge parking lot towards the street.

"Hah, falling asleep on buses. It still works!" Lenny says. "Do you know what my aunt did when she was babysitting me – when I was very little? She took a round trip with me on the 200. That lasted long enough for a healthy afternoon nap."

Carl wonders if this was the same aunt he had a one-night-stand with.

"That's why I wanted to become a bus driver when I was little!" Lenny happily continues.

"A dangerous job for someone who falls asleep on buses."

"Why?"

"Uh … because … you could fall asleep while driving the bus."

"Oh. Now that I think of it ..."

* * *

At ten o'clock there is a polite knock on their door, and Frank and another guy are standing in the corridor.

The guy turns out to be a lawyer. He spreads out forms on the windowsill. "Sign here, here, and here. And you're a free man again. _You both_ are free men again. Hee hee!"

"Wow, that's easy." Lenny scribbles his loopy signature.

"This is Las Vegas, kid. Quick marriages. Quick divorces."

Frank hands Lenny an envelope containing a little object. "Here. My wedding ring. You might want it back." He sighs sadly. "Well, maybe I'll find a new husband someday."

Lenny giggles nervously. "Would have been easier as a woman, wouldn't it? I mean, the choice was wider."

Carl nudges him. "Shh!"

Frank explains patiently, "Yes, but I feel as a man. A gay man. But that is still a man."

The lawyer swiftly sorts the forms. "One for Leonard – one for Garcia ..."

Lenny runs a hand over his hair. "Uh, Frank? There's something I would like to ask you. Where do you get that stuff from that helps you getting those muscles? I could do with a pinch of it."

Carl looks heavenwards for help.

"No, no, no!" Frank lifts his hands. "You won't get that at a drugstore or so. Anyway, you should never take substances like those for fun. Believe me, Lenny, you're okay the way you are. You don't need to pimp your muscles."

"Hmm." Lenny bends his arm and scrutinizes his dweeby biceps.

They shake hands, wish each other good luck, and then Frank and the lawyer are gone.

"Phew." Lenny kicks off his shoes and lets himself fall diagonally over the bed.

"Man, Lenny. You're such an idiot!"

"What! What did I do this time?" He knows. Agitated and frustrated, he could not help himself from saying those cruel things.

"If you want muscles, go to the gym and work out. Instead of sitting in front of the TV and stuffing your face with fast food."

"Carl, you know best how much I tried, and how little it helped."

There are shades around Lenny's eyes and a bruise on his temple with a bloody scratch in the middle. The doctor told him to wear the plaster for three days, but Lenny tore it off after one hour, fed up with people staring at it.

"At least you got divorced." Carl is standing in front of the bed.

"Yeah. And now I will never think of it again."

"Back to Springfield?"

"Back to Springfield."

* * *

The journey back seems shorter. Both of them are tired, still they drive all night, eager to get home. When the signs along the road begin to bear familiar names, they are glad.

A lucent winter dawn floods the sky when they stop at a railroad crossing just outside from Springfield. A goods train is rumbling by for minutes and minutes.

"Man, that train must be three miles long." Lenny breaks a silence that has lasted for hours.

The last wagon passes with a 'wooosh', dragging dust and litter after it.

"There's the good old power plant," Carl says.

Their home town is still hidden behind hills. All they can see are the well-known cooling towers. Catching the first glow of the day, they stand shimmering in front of the sky like sacred buildings.

Lenny is so moved he has to fight the tears back.

_Who would have guessed_, he thinks. _Having the choice between Las Vegas and Springfield, and __choosing Springfield. I'm getting old._

"Carl, let's watch the sunrise at Devil's Canyon," he finally says.

"Romantically inclined, are we?"

But Carl likes the idea of having a last little break before returning to their everyday routines.

It is freezing cold. Lenny shivers in his shirt and walks up and down at the edge of the canyon, hugging himself.

He digs the envelope out of his pocket and lets the ring slide onto his palm. Carl watches him as he is standing there for minutes, staring at the ring, lost in thoughts.

"Coffee?" Carl puts the thermos jug on the car hood.

Lenny makes a movement like he wants to drop the ring into the canyon, but then he does not. He walks back to the car. He drops the ring into Carl's hand when passing him. "Is that coffee still warm?"

"You bet. That thermos jug is isolated with stuff from the NASA."

Lenny takes off the cup cap and fills it. The coffee is indeed still so hot he has to drink it in small sips. "That helps." He refills the cup and passes it over to Carl, who takes his hands out of his pockets to reach for it.

* * *

Working at Christmas is restorative. They are still tired from that trip to 'Lenny's aunt in Salt Lake City'. This is what they tell Homer, because if he found out they went to Las Vegas without him, he would be seriously pissed off. They settle for 'Salt Lake City', because that name makes everybody think of bibles, dust, and sidewalks being rolled up at 6 pm.

Lenny feels bad about lying to Homer. Homer is his second best friend, and anyway, he is a nice guy who does not deserve being lied at. Still, letting _whomever_ know Lenny got divorced from a _man_ is impossible. If that came out, he would be done for. He would have to move to another state. Or another continent. Or another planet! And unfortunately, Homer is not the best keeper of secrets.

Carl is. He knows when something should be kept secret, and he keeps it secret.

Lenny wonders what Carl feels while telling Homer that lie about Salt Lake City.

They lounge about the sleepily buzzing plant. Lenny even brings a Christmas tree. Carl holds the doors open when he lugs it in. They dip the tree into a basin with fluid radioactive waste to give it a decorative green glow. Unfortunately, all its needles fall off during the next six hours. The waste still sticks to its twigs, making it look like a part of the scenery of the 18+ version of Grimm's fairy tales.

* * *

_A/N: The song quoted in the elevator scene is 'Lenny' from The Buggles._


	5. A Child From Iceland

"Good morning!" Mrs. Pickenpack says in her singsong voice. "And now listen everybody. - _Heeeel-lo! Homer! Stop that!_ - Well, everybody listen." She puts her hand on the shoulder of the boy standing next to her. "This is your new classmate Carl. He is from Iceland."

The first graders burst into laughter. Except for Lenny, who is persuaded that very moment Iceland must be the neighbor country of Africa. Mild confusion is written on his face. Why do the others always laugh without reason?

A similar mild confusion is written on Carl's face. The children in Iceland did never laugh at him.

"Aww, but that's not very nice," Mrs. Pickenpack says. "Why do you laugh at him? Say 'hello' to him."

"Hellooo!" the class roars, some of them still chuckling.

"Well, Carl was not born in Iceland. He was born in Springfield like most of you. His father works for an oil producing company. They moved to Iceland when Carl was two years old. Now they came back. - _Homer! Put that down!_ - Come on, Carl. That table next to Lenny is vacant. Sit down here. - _Homer! I said, put it down!_ - Well, Lenny, now you have a neighbor, isn't that nice? Help him a bit. He has spoken only Icelandic until now. - _Homer!_"

The teacher runs to wrench a large stapler from the hands of a boy before he can shoot a staple into his eye.

"Where did you get that thing from?"

"Principal Chalmers' desk!" he says innocently.

Carl looks at Lenny.

Lenny is very tiny and very cute. He wears dungarees with flower embroidery. He sits a bit slumped over, pressing his hands flat on his desk, and looks at Carl with one eye. The other one is hidden behind the hair falling over his face.

"I speak English!" Carl whispers. "We speak English at home." He has a slight accent. It makes him sound grown up.

Lenny's relief is visible.

The children are allowed to draw pictures of 'what impressed them most in their life'. Lenny draws a dinosaur. Carl draws an oil platform. He has no color pencils, so he asks Lenny, "Can I lend your blue pencil?" Lenny hands it shyly to him. Carl colors the ocean under his oil platform and hands the pencil back. "Can I lend the red one, too?"

While lending pencils from Lenny, he tells him all about his Dad's dangerous job, and that he wants to work on an oil platform himself when he is grown up. Lenny, in return, tells him everything about dinosaurs. Which is that they lived hundred years ago, the big ones were green and the little ones pink, they ate all other animals and they bellowed so loudly they made trees fall down with it.

Somebody starts throwing paper bullets at them. Carl picks up a bullet rolling over his desk and looks questioningly at Lenny.

Lenny chuckles. "That's stupid old Homer."

The attack is in no way hostile. Homer is just bored and wants attention.

When school is over, Carl seizes Lenny's hand and jumps down the steps with him. "There's my Dad!" He runs with Lenny over the lawn towards a man who is leaning against his car and smiling at them. (Thirty years later, Carl will be a stouter version of him, without a mustache.)

"Well? How was school?"

"Great! We drew pictures!"

"And you have a girlfriend already, as I see."

Lenny is insulted. "I'm a boy!"

"Oh, really?" Carl is amazed, but not taken aback.

"What's your name, young man?"

"Lenny."

"Do you want to have lunch with us, Lenny?"

"Right now?" he asks shyly. "Hmm, my parents ..."

"Don't worry. We'll call them and tell them you're with your new friend. They surely won't mind, will they?"

Carl, who is still holding Lenny's hand, is dragging him towards the car already.

* * *

Homer, Barney, Lenny and Stevie are a motley circle of friends. What keeps them together is that every one of them stands out in some way.

Homer is the weirdest child Carl has ever seen. He runs around during the lessons and cuts capers each time the teachers turn their backs on him. Whatever gets into his hands, he either sets on fire, or smashes it, or pries it open, or he uses it to pry something else open. Sometimes he is mean, but basically he is good-natured. He lives with his grumpy Dad and his hippie Mom on a rotten farm outside of Springfield and therefore is the last to get off the school bus. Everybody thinks he is cool. All the girls are in love with him.

Barney is the oldest of the class because he had to stay down two years in a row. He is large and fat.

Stevie sits on a bench during phys ed, because he has heart problems and often faints. Poor Stevie: At the age of eleven, he falls out of his family's boat and gets sucked into the turbines of Lake Springfield's embankment dam. His friends are there when what was found of him is buried on a scalding hot summer day. It is a surreal, scary experience, and even Homer is quiet most of the time.

Lenny is on first glance the most normal of that circle. Except that elderly women squee over him, "What a cute little girl!" He is extremely shy. He is the kind of child that hides in cupboards to avoid saying 'Hello' to visitors. (He confesses to Carl he hates strangers, because they always think he was a girl.) He cries easily. Sometimes he starts crying – or giggling – for no reason. His legendary fits of laughter bring every lesson to a standstill. He is afraid of the dark, of thunderstorms, of cows, of mice, of clowns, and of dozens of other things. When someone is friendly to him, he becomes clingy. The other children avoid him. They would bully him, was it not for Homer – and for Carl.

Carl is fond of Lenny from the first moment.

As a little child, Carl is very affectionate. He showers Lenny with presents: A funny looking pebble he found at a brook, drawings, toys, sweets, comic books, even flowers. He does him any possible favor. He holds his hand when they walk home after school and drags him to all the places he likes. He hugs him so often Lenny gets annoyed and squirms free of his hug.

"Hey, Carl, come off it!" Carl's mother says. "You're squeezing him to death. Let him breathe. He does not want to get hugged all the time, don't you see?"

Lenny likes Carl very much (how could he not like him), but that overflowing affection coming from a boy of his age confuses him.

* * *

Thanks to Carl, Lenny becomes less shy.

Even Lenny's mother, who dislikes black people, admits Carl has a good influence on her son. The mute boy suddenly talks his head off. He starts to resemble a human being. Most important: His grades get better.

"Carl is such an amiable child!" Mrs. Leonard chirps and invites him voluntarily into her clean house.

* * *

The holding of hands is the first thing Carl quits.

One day after school, some big boys follow them and make fun of them. "Look at that couple of lovers! Faggots! Perverts! Losers!"

Carl tells them they are stupid and defiantly clings to Lenny's hand until they reach his home. But after that day, the holding of hands gets rare, and soon it stops altogether.

* * *

You would not expect a six-year-old who hugs his friend to become a cool teenager, yet that is what happens. As a young man, ten, fifteen, twenty years later, Carl is not much short of a typical jock. One party after the other, drinking until he passes out, illegal car races, love stories with more passion than sensibility, stupid pranks with a clique of noisy buddies, fights and dares and hastily climbing over fences.

When he is seventeen, he throws in all kinds of drugs and is constantly high during a whole year. It is the time his parents go through their complicated divorce. Carl tells Lenny, the drugs 'shut out the noise'.

Lenny is aghast at that divorce. Carl's parents are the nicest adults he knows. All the years they were so much in love with each other, so happy, and they got along so well. Lenny liked staying at Carl's house, where nobody screamed at him for dropping crumbs on the carpet or not wearing slippers, where the children were allowed to loll in front of the TV, watch any program and eat as much ice cream they wanted. When Lenny slept over and he, Carl, and Carl's sisters had pillow fights, the parents joined in and were as rompish as the children. Or they spontaneously drove the whole gang to a diner or a movie theater, or a weekend trip to the beach.

And now they suddenly hate each other's guts. Carl's father sits on the couch at five in the morning, unshaved, surrounded by empty bottles, and unable to recognize his son. Carl's mother has affairs with dangerous looking men. His sisters become obnoxious bitches.

"But I still like your parents, Carl. Without them, I would have been alone with _my_ parents all those years."

* * *

Lenny does not mind Carl having changed so much, because he does not remember how Carl was when he was six. He also does not remember how he himself was when he was six.

Lenny is not shy any more. The shyness and the fears have passed like nightmares after waking up, no longer important, soon forgotten. Like Carl, he is wild and stupid.

It is the time they are obsessed with Duff World Records. They establish some of them. For example they unwrap the most candies during a movie, and they stack hundreds of beer mugs up to a pyramid on Moe's parking lot. This event is sponsored by Duff Breweries themselves, which deliver the beer, and Lenny and Carl get help from Moe and his barflies, Barney particularly, who empties the mugs afterwards. Lenny also establishes a record for quoting 'Alice In Wonderland' backwards, and for balancing on an alarm clock for 43 hours and 13 minutes. The weird thing about this is, he is drunk all the time. When he sobers up, he falls off the alarm clock.

Carl tries to outrival him, but falls off the alarm clock himself – with laughter. The mental image of Lenny balancing on that stupid clock like a penguin on an ice floe will still make him laugh many years later each time he thinks of it.

Lenny is also obsessed with bets. When he is twenty-one, he loses a bet to some other guy and has to get tits tattooed on his chest. Lenny solves the problem in a surprisingly clever way. The 'tits' under his collarbone he walks out of the tattoo studio with are _birds_. When Lenny shows them to Carl, Carl laughs so much his stomach aches. Lenny walks around on a party, his shirt open, and asks every girl, "Wanna touch my tits?" Carl follows him around, still laughing. They do not make many friends that evening.

The tattoo is crappily done and becomes a blurry rectangle of spiry pale lines after a few years. Now it is almost impossible to guess what it is supposed to represent. The result is that it turns from silly to cool.

* * *

Lenny as well as Carl have lots of buddies. Still each one regards the other one as best buddy, 'because we have known each other for ages'.

At university, where they study physics, their female fellow students bestow the sobriquet 'binary star system' upon them. "Stay away from Lenny. Stay away from Carl. Or you'll become the only planet in a binary star system."

"Most very hot and bright stars are found in close pairs!" Lenny quotes.

"_Close pairs_, huh?"

People start calling them 'gay', finding no other explanation for them sticking together.

When they fight, it is mostly because Lenny is fed up with Carl regarding himself as superior. When it was one too much of those casual, condescending remarks and Lenny goes mad, Carl has no chance, although he is physically stronger. As a young man, he is muscular and athletic, while Lenny stops gaining weight at the age of eighteen.

One constant source for condescension is that Carl has 'better' girlfriends. Lenny is only popular with the wallflowers and geeks, because he is 'soooo cute'. Until they find out his sensitivity is not of the kind that is useful for them, and they dump him.

Lenny cannot understand how Carl manages to pick up one woman after the other, although he has a reputation for being a dickhead. Every girl who becomes attached to him is in for a rollercoaster ride with nasty loopings.

It must be the charm he is overflowing with at the beginning of a relationship. He fills the bathtub of one of his flames with champaign, litters the floor with flowers and her bed with chocolate. Lenny helps him carry all those things into her flat. This relationship lasts five weeks, and after another five weeks Carl has forgotten the girl's name.

* * *

Then there is Maureen.

She is not the most beautiful of Carl's girlfriends. Nor does she stand out as more attractive in any other way. It is rather like she happens to be there when Carl is off guard and love can knock him over.

The making out will not stop. They call each other 'mouse ear', 'cuddly pie', 'poodle poo' and other terms of endearment which reveal a rapid shrinkage of their IQs. Carl follows Maureen around with a crackbrained expression. He almost slobbers over her. The sight makes Lenny wince. It is so embarrassing.

Not long ago, Carl swore he would never be so stupid and marry. Now he talks about 'settling down' and 'being more mature'. He and Maureen make out at the wedding. They go on making out after the wedding. They make out on a bench on the playground and scare the Mommies with their toddlers away. When their baby daughter starts to cry, it is Lenny who takes her out of her buggy, sits down on the swing and sings 'Que sera, sera' to her.

The accomplishment of having a family fills Carl with foolish pride. He cannot help himself from saying to Lenny, "No woman will ever be seriously interested in you, because you'll never achieve anything in your life. You're a nice guy, but you lack the willpower."

Lenny gasps with shock. "Carl, that was not nice!" he finally manages.

"You asked for it by complaining about getting dumped by every girl."

Moments later, Carl finds himself lying on the floor of Moe's Tavern, soaked with sangria from the three-liter bottle Lenny smashed on his head. Lenny storms off, slamming the door.

"With friends like you one doesn't need enemies," Moe growls and drops a towel on Carl's chest. "Here. Clean yourself, asshole."

Lenny is so insulted he does not talk to Carl for months. Carl hardly notices, because he found his one and only love, the woman he will spend every minute with as long as he breathes. It will take him many, many years until he fully comprehends what he did to Lenny by saying those two sentences.

They hit Lenny like a comet. Values are devalued and the universe is void. Nihilism laughs into his face. Angry and disappointed he spends his time reading thrillers and watching documentaries about serial killers.

One night he switches off the TV and thinks: _Wait and see._

The following morning he wakes up surrounded by sheets of paper on which he scribbled notes.

The same day, he buys a computer. He also buys thirty-six cans of an energy drink famous for killing people because each can contains as much caffeine as a whole coffee plantation. Impatiently, Lenny teaches himself to touch-type within fifteen minutes. Until midnight, he has written the first ten pages of the thriller that popped up in his mind - completely with story arc and _dramatis personae _- while he was staring at the blank TV screen.

Lenny is aware he is not producing profound literature. His novel is not even unique. He just re-uses the tropes and memes recurring in the books he read during the last weeks. The documentaries he watched help him add gory details. Yet he feels like a phoenix. He discovers he is able to write in a fluent style (after weeding out the 'almosts' and 'probablys'), and this is better than being profound and unique, because it attracts more readers. Writing is fun – especially when he indulges in lengthy depictions of his serial killer tearing out eyeballs and still beating hearts.

Writing also surprises him with an unexpected experience. To make his story more enthralling, he switches back and forth between different points of view. For each character the same things mean something different. Each one of them has his or her truth, believing it is the only one. Even the wicked and insane killer has a point.

Constructing his novel, Lenny finds himself 'thinking in stereo'. This is something new. All his life his thoughts were an endless monologue of a single inner voice.

The problem will not go away. His mind develops into a mix of video game and cartoon, with elves, warriors, magicians and animals wearing bow ties impersonating different voices. Afraid it might be the beginning of a mental illness, Lenny confides in his eldest sister.

"That's pretty normal," Eleanor says. "You just look at things from different angles now. To symbolize this, you use something you know, that is, video games and cartoons. You don't need to worry. As long as your warriors do not command you to go on a gun rampage or such." She adds, "Your brain must have been pretty boring before."

Lenny is still not happy. He grieves for The Great Single Voice, feeling that the ability to look at things from different angles is a handicap.

* * *

He realizes why he never knows how to counter Carl's condescending remarks. He feels inferior to Carl, because Carl is better in being a douchebag. There is nothing else Carl is better in, but everybody who misunderstands Darwin knows what a valuable trait douchebaggery is.

This is the apoapsis of their friendship.

* * *

Lenny and Carl are on speaking terms again, if you count 'How are you' and 'Fine' as speaking.

Six months after the sangria event Lenny relaxes at Moe's Tavern. He is off from work on sick leave. His arm is bandaged. Typewriter's cramp. Writing three novels in a row was a bit too much.

Carl comes in, shaking the rain from his umbrella.

Lenny has never seen Carl with an umbrella.

Carl sits down on the barstool next to him.

"How are you?"

"Fine."

Three beers later, Carl says, "Lenny. I'm getting divorced."

"And I'm getting published."

They are twenty-six years old, and they start to grow up.

* * *

Lenny's novels get published bearing the titles 'A Stranger No One Knows', 'At Night When It's Dark', and 'The Murderer Did It'. Springfield's newspapers write about 'the local novelist' and 'successful son of our town'. Lenny is invited to hold a reading at the public library (which prides itself in having more than 150 books).

Homer and Marge sit in the front row, smiling happily, because the famous novelist is a friend of theirs. Lenny smiles back. He looks at the faces in the dimly-lit, packed room and spots his co-workers from the nuclear power plant, including, to his surprise, Mr. Smithers. Lenny never thought the man had a life besides numbers and diagrams.

He finally spots Carl, who sits in the darkest corner.

The public rewards Lenny's reading with breathless silence, and subsequently with roaring applause. Lenny swims in pride.

Dr. Hibbert and his wife are the first to get their copy signed. After them, darker hands put down a copy of 'A Stranger No One Knows' on the table in front of Lenny, and a well-known voice says, "Will the great novelist honor me with an autograph?"

"Sure!"

They celebrate at Moe's Tavern.

"Your novel is really good," Carl says cautiously. "Uh, I didn't know you had such a vivid imagination."

"Writing is easier than people think," Lenny says modestly. "And you get better with practice."

Late at night, Homer and Marge dance to the songs from the music box, holding each other close. At this time, being in their twenties, Homer looks like the lead singer of a boy group, and Marge is one of the prettiest girls Lenny has ever seen. Her luminous blue hair flows down to the hollows of her knees; an eccentric, but beautiful hairdo.

"They look like Adam and Eve, don't you think?" Lenny addresses Carl.

Carl is so drunk he tips over his glass when he puts it down. Melting ice cubes glide over the counter. "Lenny, I can't remember what I said to you. What made you so angry. Whatever it was, I am sorry. I missed you, mate. Hanging out and such."

Lenny stares open-mouthed at him. An _apology_? From _Carl_?

"You still angry?"

"No. Not really. After all, it made me write novels."

"Then you accept my half-assed apology?"

"Yeah, I do."

Carl jumps from his barstool, pulls Lenny down from his barstool, too, and snuggles him against his chest in a drunken hug.

"Maureen can go to hell," he whispers hoarsely into Lenny's collar.

* * *

Carl has a restraining order. He kept calling Maureen up so often she had to change her number. He kicked up rows in front of her house at all times of the day and the night, annoying the whole neighborhood. When he threw a brick into Maureen's window and threatened to kill her, her new lover called the police.

Carl puts Lenny, Moe, Barney, Sam and Larry up to help him getting back at his ex-wife. (Homer excuses himself. He is afraid to lose Marge's respect.) They head Maureen off when she is cycling to work. Racing past her in a car, they bombard her with foul eggs and rotten vegetables. After an U-turn with screaming brakes and smoking tires, they race past her again and shoot mustard, ketchup and paint at her with large water pistols like a mad gang of snipers. Another U-turn, and Carl bombards her with his 'extra surprise', a newspaper packet with waste from the garbage cans of the 'Frying Dutchman'. It hits her head. The soaked newspaper explodes and showers the ducked woman with fishtails, crab shells, octopus innards and rancid sauce.

"Right in the kisser! Man, she will stink for weeks!"

Everybody in the car cheers and laughs and high-fives. Lenny, who is the designated driver, looks into the rear view mirror and catches a dwindling reflection of Maureen. She is standing next to her bike that has fallen down on the street, the front wheel sticking up in a right angle. The white work coat she has to wear for her job at the laundry is stained. She covers her face with her hands.

Lenny wonders who babysits her daughter now that she has to work.

* * *

Only Lenny and Carl have to stand trial, because they are the only ones Maureen recognizes, and they refuse to give away the names of the others. In a fit of decency, Moe collects a bag full of money from them and himself to help Lenny and Carl pay their fine.

"Take it, before I change my mind!" he growls while pushing the bag into Carl's hands.

* * *

Carl is bitter and resentful for a long time. He keeps repeating, "She wasn't worth it. She was nothing special. She should have been glad. She will never get anyone better!"

Lenny talks him into going on a journey with him, to get him out of Springfield for a while. "Is there any place you would like to go, Carl?"

"New York," Carl says between clenched teeth.

It becomes a trip along the East Coast down to Florida. When they return, Maureen and her lover are gone – they have moved to Chicago.

* * *

Lenny writes some more novels. To Carl's relief, his friend never presses his works in progress on him. He just says, "I'm getting a book published. Want a complimentary copy?"

"Sure!"

Lenny never asks Carl if he liked his newest book. Or if he read it at all.

* * *

Lenny starts hero-worshipping Carl when they are thirty. Or rather, then he becomes aware he is doing so. It has been going on for a while already, but he dismissed it as not really happening.

Until Carl's second marriage.

"Lenny, do you want to be my best man?"

"Sure, Carl. Hey, wait, you're going to marry again?"

"That's why I'm asking, Einstein."

Lenny is perplexed. Not because of his hero-worshipping, which he has not realized yet, but because until now Carl never mentioned anyone he considered to marry.

Wife to-be number two turns out to be an elegant, buxom woman named Carolyn. Carl introduces her and Lenny to each other by inviting them both to a restaurant. She gives Lenny a languid smile and a languid handshake, then turns away to check her make-up in a mirror.

Carl looks at Lenny apologetically. He seems not only sorry for Carolyn's lack of interest, but also for wanting to marry her.

* * *

One of Lenny's duties as best man is to organize the bachelor party. This is the right job for him. Lenny loves organizing parties and is really good in it.

He is obsessed with Carl's bachelor party for weeks, thinking of nothing else than making it the greatest bachelor party Springfield has ever seen, and making his friend happy with it.

He succeeds. Everybody is in high spirits. There are no big accidents, only some small ones, which create amusement instead of spoiling the party. Carl beams with pride for having such a friend. "Three cheers for Lenny, who would run a catering service if this was a better world!"

The drunken lot grabs Lenny and throws him into the air with much noise and laughter, until he hits the chandelier. The chandelier sways dangerously, there are screams and more laughter, everything goes topsy-turvy, and Lenny, covered with chandelier dust, lies in the arms of Carl, who caught him.

Dust flakes snow down around them. "This is the best party I ever had, Lenny," Carl says, his voice low, looking at Lenny affectionately. He puts him gently back on his feet, and before Lenny knows, he is wrapped in a hug for minutes and minutes.

They hold each other like castaways.

Carl looks so damn good. He smells so damn good. He feels so freaking damn good when Lenny has his arms around him.

Someone turns the music blasting loud. _Look on the floor and all is spinning round … someone told me this was just a dance … _

Lenny finds his feet walking towards the bar. His body has dissolved into a warm cloud. What the hell just happened?

Moe does his duty as a barkeeper, wearing a pink suit and a striped bow-tie which make him look like Austin Powers. Barney is asleep slumped over the counter, his cheek bedded in a plate with cake.

"Moe, something strong!"

"Give me ten seconds."

Moe juggles his bottles so fast Lenny cannot follow them with his eyes. The result is multi-layered. Lenny downs it.

He has been busy all evening with seeing to it that everything went like planned, giving orders via cellphone, again and again excusing himself and running out of the hall. While Carl was holding the humorous speech Lenny wrote for him, Lenny himself stood sentinel over the giant cake to keep Homer and Barney from eating it before the stripper could jump out.

Now it is late at night and everything needing his superintendence is over. With a sigh, Lenny switches off his cellphone and throws it into a waste bin.

Moe says, "That's a hot chick Carl is going to marry. And she works as a masseuse. Hee hee. Wouldn't mind if she came to my house and -"

Lenny bangs his glass on the counter. "'nother one."

* * *

He cannot remember how he got home. He remembers Carl pointing at Moe, saying, "That suit looks so gay!", and Moe's angry face. He remembers someone saying, "Don't drink so much! Think of the wedding tomorrow! You'll have a terrible hangover!"

Yes, he has a terrible hangover. He is glad for it. It forces him to concentrate all his remaining strength on the most necessary things. He is glad for two-year-old Bart Simpson, who skipped walking and moved from crawling on to running. Bart also learned to imitate farts by pressing both hands on his mouth.

Just when the mothers in law dab their eyes with their handkerchiefs, Bart interrupts the wedding ceremony by pointing at Reverend Lovejoy and saying, "You look like gorilla poo!"

Homer jams his misbehaved son under his arm and lugs him to his car. While the imitated farts die away, Marge says, "Oh, Lenny, I'm sorry for this. We couldn't find a babysitter." She is heavily pregnant with her second child. "This time it's a girl." She sounds relieved.

Homer comes back, and now Marge runs, burying her face in a sick bag.

"Uh, honey, maybe you should stay with Bart in the car," Homer calls after her, flattening his thinning hair with his hand. "But be careful with the seat covers!" he cannot keep himself from adding. Noticing everybody is looking at him, he jokes, "Oh, my. That's what having a family means. Carl, that's in store for you!"

Everybody laughs and pretends not to remember Carl's first wife and his daughter.

* * *

It must have been the alcohol. Lenny was drunk enough to throw his cellphone into a waste bin. So stupid! He drives to the restaurant to get it back, but all the waste was carried to the dump already.

Carl calls him on the landline. "Hey, there you are."

"I must have mislaid my cellphone."

"Let me guess. It's on the dump." Carl saw Lenny throw it away.

He offers Lenny to drive him to the dump. "Then we'll ask them where they dumped this week's waste. I'll call your number until we hear it ring."

Lenny admires this plan.

Carolyn does not. "Why can't your friend just buy a new phone! He's a novelist, he's got enough money."

Lenny heard it, she spoke loud enough. He does not want to cause marital trouble right after wedding. So he says, "Okay, that's another good idea. After all, I don't need one of those expensive phones with integrated, dunno, can openers and such." He tries to laugh.

* * *

What a luck the human race invented alcohol and Lenny drank so much of it. You do strange things when you are drunk. Things that do not count. Like throwing away your cellphone.

* * *

Then Smithers offers a better job to Lenny. He would receive a higher payment. He would not have to work in shifts any more, but conventionally from nine to five. He would be transferred to sector 4, where the employees are known to be nicest.

Lenny declines with a flimsy pretext.

"I thought you would be happy, but okay, if you don't want to." Smithers looks at him questioningly.

Smithers thereupon offers the job to Carl, who accepts it without hesitation. He returns from Smithers' office dancing along the corridor. "Who-hoo! I'm getting promoted! I'm going to sector 4 next week!"

"That's great, man!" Homer shouts. He does not envy Carl, because he is convinced Carl is a genius and deserves being promoted.

"Congratulations!" Lenny says, trying to sound happy.

Carl packs his stuff together. The following week, Lenny comes to work, and there is no Carl.

They hardly see each other now. Their different shifts mean different breaks. Sector 4 even has a different entrance, with its own little parking lot.

Lenny keeps strolling into Homer's control center and trying to chat with him. But at work, Homer is much too sleepy. He says "Uh-huh" without listening, and after a while, the only answer Lenny gets is snoring.

"Man, you stupid moron!" Lenny says, regretting it the same moment.

One empty day after the other speeds by. Lenny never noticed in what a rat cage he has to work. Sector 7 is the saddest, dreariest place in the world. The concrete walls and iron stays close in on Lenny. Every scratch, every stain reminds him of all the years he spend here, and the warning signs mock him for the sadness accompanying his memories.

He realizes he is in trouble.

Whatever it is, he did not ask for it, and he would be glad if he could get rid of it. It does not feel pleasant, rather like God is punishing him. It is like math lessons in elementary school, when he had to solve word problems which made no sense to him.

Whatever it is. Lenny does not know what it is.

It cannot be love. You only love people you do not know, and when love sees to it that you get to know them better, you stop loving them. Love is driven by sex, and this, whatever it is, is not. The thought alone feels so weird Lenny shies away from it.

Yet, in a way that resembles love, he is attracted to Carl. Strongly. To some degree it is even physical. He wants to hug him. Not with a much too short buddy hug, he wants to hold him for a while. Like on that damn bachelor party. He wants to put an arm around him when they sit on the sofa and watch TV. That is all – that is really all! If he could do that from time to time, he would be happy.

Of course it would not work. Carl would glare at him and ask, "Lenny? What is this going to be?", and Lenny would have to take his arm away.

He definitely does not want to kiss him, because if he tried that, Carl would punch his face so hard it would stick out of the back of his skull afterwards.

Can you be platonically gay? After not being gay all your life, not for a single second?

Maybe all this is just the evaporation of a much larger problem. Maybe Lenny is developing schizophrenia, or a tumor is pressing his brain, making him believe he is falling in love with his best friend.

Lenny goes to Dr. Nicks Walk-In Clinic. Dr. Nick looks with a pocket lamp into his ear and says he sees no tumor. Lenny goes to Dr. Hibbert, who has a machine that cuts a virtual image of Lenny's brain into slices. No tumor either.

"Don't worry, Mr. Leonard. Hee hee. Everything is in its place and working. Hee hee. What made you think you had a tumor anyway?"

"I'm … behaving kinda strange. Uh. Thinking about strange things."

"You're overworked, that's all. Go on a holiday. Go to some nice place and relax. Hee hee hee!"

* * *

Luckily Smithers told no one he offered the promotion to Lenny first. His co-workers would demand explanations why he declined it, and he could give them none. Worse, Carl might guess the reason. At best, he would regard Lenny as pathetic.

Whatever it is, Lenny's instinct yells at him to hide it. He goes to the rat cage and chats with his co-workers, complaining about nothing more than the nasty weather and their miserly boss. He hangs out with his buddies at the usual places and does the usual things.

No one knows he drinks too much and eats too little. No one knows soap operas make him cry. He watches cartoons instead. They make him cry, too. He watches the news, and they make him cry even more. Finally he zaps into a documentary about the Mesozoic era, and that helps him calm down. That and brandy. He giggles at the computer animations of weird looking beasts, then falls asleep, holding the brandy bottle, tears drying on his face.

Lenny is afraid of being left alone, of everybody abandoning him. It would be like drowning in a Mesozoic ocean, in dark green water brimming with cold-blooded monsters in chitin shells.

People abandon you when you have problems. They abandon you because a bug in the human brain's software makes them fulfill your fears.

Lenny knows how others receive him: naïve, emotional, boring, finnicky. Carl sticks to him because Lenny never wants anything from him, but is his partner in crime. Homer sticks to him thanks to a unique mixture of faith and stupidity. Everybody else sticks to him because Carl and Homer stick to him.

One more unpleasant character trait would upset the balance.

* * *

Maybe Lenny is not as good as he believes in hiding whatever-it-is.

He comes across Homer's wife in the supermarket, and she nearly drops the cereal box she just took off the shelf.

"Oh, Lenny, you look bad. Are you ill?"

"Yeah, I've been feeling queasy for days. I think I caught the flu or something."

Marge looks him over. "Do you eat enough? Do you eat regularly?" She sniffs. "You started smoking again. Oh, Lenny!"

"Marge, please, not here ..." Lenny is afraid she will take a clinical thermometer out of her handbag.

Bart and Lisa sit in their Mommy's shopping cart. Bart is amused. Lisa, a tiny baby still, looks at Lenny with large, blue eyes.

The following week Homer invites Lenny to the bowling alley and the stadium. At Moe's Tavern he plays billiard and dart with him.

"Homer, whatever Marge said, I'm okay."

"She said you need a girlfriend."

"Pfff. She is overreacting. I just caught some virus."

"The I-miss-Carl virus." Homer arranges the billiard balls for a new game, then walks to the counter to get another mug of beer.

When he comes back, Lenny is still standing there, his queue in his hand, flabbergasted.

Homer grins with a Santa Claus beard of beer foam around his mouth. "Hey, Lenny, did you think I wouldn't notice? It's no surprise you feel lonely, now that Carl's working at ohh-everybody-is-so-posh-here sector 4." He says the ohh-everybody part with a niminy-piminy voice, wiggling his elbows.

* * *

Then Carl calls Lenny up. "Got any plans for your day off?"

"Nah, not yet." Lenny watches his gold fish swim around in its bowl.

"What about driving to the lake and skip stones on the water?"

"Uh, okay."

And that is what they do.

Walking along the water's edge, they find a landing stage and sit down on it.

"If people go on throwing stones into that lake, it will be filled in, dunno, a thousand years or so," Lenny says.

"It will dry up earlier."

Half an hour of silence.

"That cloud there looks like Mr. Burns."

"Yeah. Oh, poor Burnsie's head fell off."

Half an hour of silence.

"Lenny, something wrong with you?"

"Nah, why?"

"Dunno."

Lenny looks at Carl. "Trouble with Carolyn?"

He suspected trouble as soon as Carl asked, 'Got any plans for your day off?'. When he heard 'skip stones', he was sure.

Carolyn's boss fired her because of a quarrel. "Now that you got promoted and earn so much money, I don't need to work anyway," she said to Carl.

"Said it and sat down on the sofa, and hardly ever got up since then," Carl tells Lenny. "When I come home, the apartment stinks, because she never opens the windows. Or cleans the dishes. Or takes out the trash. When I open the windows, she says the stench comes from outside. Man, that sucks!"

Lenny forgot his cigarettes in the car, but he does not miss them.

* * *

Lenny visits Carl and is taken aback when he sees Carolyn. The curvy woman got fat. She sits on the sofa like an amoeba in a dress with floral pattern. Her feet are as broad as long, and when she gets up, she has trouble to jam them into her flip-flops.

* * *

After one month in his new job, Carl gets into the habit of strolling around in the plant during his breaks, his coffee mug in his hand, 'to get some exercise'. Those strolls always end in sector 7, more precisely, 7E, his old workplace. There he perches on the sill of the window looking into Homer's room, stirs his cold coffee and chats with Lenny.

They get on the nerves of Lenny's new co-worker. "It's your break, but not mine! I'm trying to work!"

"Don't be so touchy!" Carl says to him.

"Just shut up already!"

Lenny hastily pushes his friend out of the room. "Let's go over to Homer!"

Two hours later, Carl shows up again. "Eww, there's the big black guy again!" he says to the new man.

"Geez, you two are so _gay_."

"Wow. Never heard this one. What about you, Lenny?"

"Okay, let's have some coffee." Lenny pushes his friend once more out of the room.

In the break room they are spotted by Smithers. "Mr. Carlson, you're supposed to be in sector 4."

"It's my break."

"Have your break in the break room of sector 4. We don't want the employees to run around in the whole plant. And you, Mr. Leonard – it is definitely not your break. Go back to work!"

Smithers wanted to separate these two by shifting one of them to sector 4, because he suspected them to care more for their friendship than for their work. That plan backfired.

* * *

Carl, who was so happy about his new job at first, is disappointed. His nice new co-workers are nice to each other, but not to him. They talk to each other over his head. They talk a lot about memories they share, forcing Carl into silence. They talk about operas and modern literature and say casually to Carl, "... well, you're probably rather interested in soccer."

"Indeed I am!" Although Carl is not a big soccer fan. It is too European for his taste.

He complains bitterly to Lenny and Homer about 'those snobs in lab coats'.

Finally, he is fed up. A dispute with one of his co-workers gets touchy-feely. Rumor races through the corridors: The sector 7 man went berserk in sector 4!

Lenny and Homer wait in front of Smithers' office until Carl comes out.

"What happened? What will happen now? What did he say? What? What? What?" Lenny jumps up and down, his hands clenched to fists.

Carl puts his arms around Lenny's and Homer's shoulders and walks down the corridor with them. "You got me back. Smithers downgraded me to my old job."

"Whoo-hoo!" Both of them cheer.

"Not so loud. It's a terrible punishment." But Carl is not upset. He beams with relief and happiness.

* * *

Carolyn does not beam with relief and happiness.

Half an hour after Lenny got home this evening, the phone rings.

"Villa Leonard. Hi, Carl."

"Wanna come over to a spontaneous exorcism party?"

"Exorcism?"

"Carolyn. I kicked her out."

Lenny races downtown, with the lasagna on the backseat he was warming up for his dinner.

In Carl's apartment, all windows are open, and they are surrounded by the evening sky and the neighbors' flickering TV screens. The whole place is messy.

"Lasagna! Man! Real food! Someone has been cooking for me! How long has it been?"

"Nah, I just tore off the lid and threw it into the oven. But it's still warm."

After a few beers, they turn on loud music and chuck Carolyn's possessions out of the windows. Getting wild and crazy, they throw her bras at each other, rolling on the floor with laughter. It is childish, and it is mean. They enjoy it a lot.

* * *

Carl never tells Homer and Lenny what really happened at sector 4. He just boasts with how much he intimidated the other guy. According to him, Carl shook him out of his lab coat, and the man looked like a deer caught in the headlight.

Lenny guesses the sector 4 guys did not know how to handle Carl's bouts of douchebaggery. Serves them right.

Carl pretends to be grumpy, but everybody can tell how happy he is to be back at his old place, and most of all, to be with Lenny again.

Lenny does not say much. What is there to say when everything is in best order again?

The mysterious pain in his back vanishes from one day to the other. Likewise the digestive problems and the feeling of pressure in his eyeballs. Lenny piles food on his plate when they go to the cafeteria and wolfs it down. He gains two pounds of weight and looks less yellow.

'Falling in love with his best friend', hah. Such a nonsense. He is embarrassed when he remembers that. All he wants is to be with Carl at work. And at Moe's. And to go with him to Itchy-and-Scratchy-Land, the Oktoberfest, greyhound racing and such.

He hardly listens when Carl talks of some new girlfriend. Because Lenny hardly ever sees those girlfriends. He even wonders when Carl meets them. Besides spending most of his free time with Lenny, there is just not enough left for a halfway acceptable relationship with someone else.

Lenny suspects his friend to do what he does himself: enhancing the truth. Lenny does that all the time. A casual chat while waiting at the supermarket checkout becomes a date. A date becomes a one-night-stand. A one-night-stand becomes a relationship. Even watching the neighbor's daughter with a spy-glass becomes a relationship, and hastily paging through porn magazines becomes 'a real love life'.

At least there are dates. With girls. And the porn magazines are straight porn magazines.

_Does that look like someone who is gay?_ SpongeBob says triumphantly to the other characters in Lenny's internal video game. (SpongeBob became the leading voice in it.)

Lenny hits on girls while Carl is standing right next to him, because that is what you do when you are straight and cool and not in love with your best friend. And because Carl hits on girls, too, while Lenny is standing right next to him. Sometimes they hit on the same girl. This always ends with the girl getting annoyed and walking away. Then Lenny and Carl exchange a look without saying a word, and those looks are a bit too desperate.

* * *

Lenny is not surprised when Carl marries a third time. That is what he himself would do if he was in Carl's place.

* * *

Lenny is not surprised about Carl's second divorce, because Carl never talked about his wife. Lenny is not surprised about Carl's third divorce, because Carl talked about his wife and his stepdaughter all the time.

His family here, his daughter there. He has no time to go to Moe's, because he has to accompany his wife to a doctor's appointment, he has to pick up Gracie after belly dancing or Japanese lessons, or one of his sisters-in-law has announced a visit.

Carl buys a bigger car for his family. He buys healthy food for his family. He complains about his wage. "How am I supposed to feed a family with that!" He complains about the crossroads close to his house. "Much too dangerous for children!" He papers the door of his locker in the power plant with photos of Josie and Gracie. He promises immediate death to anyone who threatens his family, and thinks of buying another gun, having two in his house already.

"Hmm, be careful with guns!" Homer says, who has a good reason not to have guns in his house. A spiky-haired, principal-annoying reason. Homer does not need Marge to tell him a house with Bart and a gun in it is no safe house.

Lenny says nothing. He heard other guys talk like Carl. All of them got divorced.

Carl never mentions his other, his own daughter, his and Maureen's child. He has not seen her for years. Josie does not even know this child exists. In his darkest moments, Lenny thinks of telling her, but he knows, he is too loyal to Carl to do that.

Carl hates his sisters-in-law, because they are loud and messy, and them and Josie gang up against him when they are having their kaffeeklatsch.

And all the family photos are stuck to the outside of his locker door. Stuck to the inside is a large photo of him and Lenny taken on a hunting trip. With an auto timer, somewhere in the desert, that one wonderful summer.

* * *

After moody, cuckoo-clock throwing Josie, Carl says for the third time, "I've learned my lesson. I'm never gonna marry again."

Lenny knows, this time he means it.

Homer says, "Hey Carl, you should marry Lenny."

Carl grins. "Nah. That wouldn't work. Huh, Lenny? We would fight all the time. Wouldn't we?" He gives his friend a brotherly slap against the back of his head, making him spill his beer.

Yes, they would fight all the time. Carl is right. Lenny knows it.

* * *

After all, it is not worth it. You can have affairs with, oh, virtually everyone. (Although it is not healthy in some cases.) But there is no one else in this world who would consider a daft, white nincompoop like Lenny as best friend.

This friendship seems to be a superficial drinking-mates-hanging-out-with-each-other thing, but actually, it is richer and deeper than a love affair. Lenny is normally bad in reading people. Carl is the only exception. After thirty years, Lenny reads his mind by glancing at him. Carl, of course, reads Lenny's mind, too. _And still likes him._

They resemble each other more than they admit. Lenny regards Carl as his cooler and more determined _alter ego_, living out character traits Lenny himself is to self-conscious for.

Lenny cannot afford to mess this friendship up. Stowing away some things in the cellars of his soul and never looking at them again is the lesser evil. What the heck! Lenny is old enough to know _nothing_ is _ever_ perfect. You are lucky already when you find something that is good without being perfect. You should enjoy it as long as it lasts.

* * *

Carl still hates clingy people.

Knowing he has to keep him away to keep him close, Lenny administers to his friend carefully assessed insults, punches, antagonisms and trademark Lenford-Leonard-zaniness Carl can become exasperated with.

Carl buys a can of caviar to cool Lenny's black eye with it. Lenny gives him a reproachful look with the other eye and pulls a face. Meanwhile he is thinking, _Hah, gotcha! Again! Ever heard of reverse psychology, dumbass?_

Each week they go to martial arts training. There they headlock each other, kick away each others legs from under their bodies, punch sensitive spots and roll around on the mat, trying to force the other one down, twist his arms and straddle him.

"Do you give up? Do you give up _now_?"

Until they are so exhausted they are just lying on the floor, panting for air.

"You two are friends?" asks Akira, the trainer, arching one of his calligraphic eyebrows in a way that took him years of practice.

People are taken aback when they see Lenny and Carl beat each other up like mobsters in a Jackie Chan movie over the fine grained analysis of a Jane Austen novel.

Lenny and Carl also earn a reputation for road rage. For example, Carl brakes, because all of a sudden a little old man creeps out of a manhole in the middle of the street. Lenny, who is following him in his own car, crashes into Carl's trunk, and splinters of Carl's rear lights tinkle on the street.

Both of them jump out of their cars simultaneously and point at each other.

"Look forward when you're driving, bird brain!"

"Look backward when you're braking, moron!"

Lenny kicks the bumper of Carl's car, which falls off and tumbles on the street.

Carl folds the antenna of Lenny's car, making it look like the antenna of a Teletubby.

The next moment they fight on the crossroads with cars honking at them from four directions and people coming out of the shops to see what is going on. They still call each other names when Officer Lou and Officer Eddie push them against the police car and handcuff them.

Sitting on the backseat of the police car, they are quiet. Lenny stares out of the window. Turning to Carl, he finds him smiling affectionately at him – only for the fraction of a second, then Carl has reinstalled his grumpy glare.

But Lenny understood. He is not the only one who uses reverse psychology.

* * *

_A/N: _

_Stevie McGregor: not an OC, but briefly mentioned in 'My Mother the Carjacker'. _

_'Most very hot and bright stars are found in close pairs': Lenny is quoting Wikipedia here. _

_'Look on the floor and all is spinning round …': Quoted from 'Hypnotic Tango' by MyMine._


	6. A Half Decent Therapy

_A/N: This chapter is Lenny's and Carl's side of 'A Half-Decent Proposal' (DABF04). Especially Carl's side of Lenny's and Carl's side, as Lenny has some screen time in that episode already. So here is an extra-disclaimer: For this chapter, it was unavoidable to quote and retell parts of that episode. This, of course, is not material created by me._

* * *

Carl is amazed. Lenny never told him his therapist was beautiful.

Until now, Carl imagined a fifty year old Mommy with a bun and a woolen cardigan, who said, "Tell me about your sorrows, child." Instead, Mrs. Oliver looks not a day older than twenty-seven. And she looks like Pocahontas. Some of her ancestors must have been Indians.

"Nice you took the time, Mr. Carlson." When she shakes his hand, bracelets tingle at her wrist.

So this is where Lenny spends every Thursday afternoon.

The room is comfortable. It is in the attic of a cozy little house, with windows in the slanting ceilings that reach down to the floor. A dreamcatcher slowly turns, and turns back, in the warm air coming from a radiator. An indoor fountain murmurs in a corner.

Lenny is in psychotherapy since last summer. This is nothing new. He was in therapy for the first time in high school. His 'problem' back then was partying and drinking with his buddies all the time, and sending him to a shrink was his parents' way of dealing with it.

Since then, Lenny started several therapies and dropped out of them again. He also keeps taking pills. Carl cannot remember any of their names. Some are against anxiety, some against compulsive behavior, some against depression. Lenny counts five differently shaped and colored pills on the table during lunch breaks and swallows one after the other with the bottled spring water he orders via the internet.

His larder is full of spring water cases. He takes those light blue bottles to work with him, not trusting the ordinary mineral water from the supermarket. "That's pure poison, Carl! I've seen it on TV! There are all kinds of chemistry in those plastic bottles, and it seeps into the water!"

Carl thinks the whole business with the pills – and the bottled spring water – is bullshit. Lenny is not depressive or compulsive. He is quirky, that is all. His only problem is, he gets nervous too easily and he believes everything people talk him into. He probably read a magazine article about anxiety, discovered the symptoms in himself, and went to a doctor, who made it worse by treating him instead of telling him, "You're fit and healthy, go home."

Carl is convinced all those pills have no effect on Lenny. Except putting some of the poison he dreads so much into his body. Carl regards them as expensive placebos, curing his gullible friend of imaginary diseases.

_There should be pills against confusion_, he thinks. That is Lenny's problem. Confusion.

And now there is Pocahontas, sorry, Mrs. Oliver, with whose help Lenny plans to brave the world without pills one day.

It feels like he broke an unwritten rule by never saying, 'Whoo-hoo, by the way, my therapist is a super hot chick!'

He hardly mentioned her at all until last week, when he told Carl, "Uh, my therapist wants to see you."

"Why, what have I done?"

"She said, we're moving in circles."

"What did you tell her about us?"

"Uh, no, Carl, you got that wrong. _Me and my therapist_ are moving in circles. The therapy doesn't move on, you know."

"Oh." Carl avoids looking at Lenny.

"Uh, uhm, and now she wants to talk to people who know me. To look at … the whole thing … from a new angle."

"Man, Lenny, that sounds so stupid."

"Don't worry, Carl. She's nice. You'll like her. She won't ask you about embarrassing childhood memories or such. That's not her way. She won't ask you much at all. She never forces anyone to talk about things they don't want to talk about."

Carl is a bit surprised that him seeing his therapist means so much to Lenny, but okay, it will be only forty-five minutes, and if Lenny wants it …

* * *

Lenny was right. Mrs. Oliver really does not ask many questions. Twenty minutes pass by with talking about any topic that pops up. Mrs. Oliver is intelligent and witty, and talking to her is fun, but what does all this have to do with Lenny's therapy?

The easy chair Carl is sitting in is _too_ easy. The cushions swallow him, and he is lying halfway on his back. The murmuring from the indoor fountain gets on his nerves.

He finally says, "Come on, Mrs. O. You haven't ordered me here to talk about softball scores. Is there hope for my friend, or will he spend the rest of his life in the nuthouse?" He flashes a smile at her, hinting he would not mind a bit of flirting.

He should have known. It never works with intellectual chicks. She does not smile back. She looks at him thoughtfully, then says, "What do you think about your friend?"

"He's a completely normal, nice guy." That is all she needs to know.

She nods, and then starts talking about the nuclear power plant. Obviously that was the topic she and Lenny talked most of during the last months. She knows the plant like she worked there for twelve years. She knows every leak, every clogged valve and every joke about mutated rats.

What she does not know are the jokes about Smithers. She barely knows anything about him at all.

Carl suddenly realizes Lenny never made fun of Smithers again since that awkward encounter during the night shift. Lately there circulated a very nasty joke, and instead of laughing, Lenny said, "They told this joke already about Bill Clinton and what-was-her-name."

Lenny also said to Carl, "Smithers would not be as happy as he thinks if Burns suddenly returned the favor. You know what I mean. That would rather give him the shock of his life. Knock him out of his dream world."

"Who cares," Carl said.

Lenny obviously does …

Talking about the power plant leads to talking about Homer, and that leads to talking about Moe. Mrs. Oliver knows him.

"Oh, that guy. He stalked me last year. I forgot to roll down the shutters, and he filmed me through the window while I was undressing."

"Did you call the police?"

"I went out into the garden and asked him if he wanted to come in for a cup of coffee. He dropped his camera and ran. I took that for a 'no'."

Carl laughs so much his belly aches. "Oh, that's so typical Moe."

"A strange little Quasimodo, huh? Normally I would have been afraid if someone stared through my bedroom window. I would really have called the police. But when I saw him, I knew immediately he was harmless. Okay, I wasn't hundred per cent sure. I had pepper spray in the pocket of my bathrobe."

"You should ask Lenny to send Moe to you to talk a bit about him. After all, Moe is one of his closest friends, too."

She smirks. "Then I could give him his camera back. I still have it. I only deleted his recording of me."

Someone rings the doorbell in a shy way, by just tipping it.

"Oh!" Mrs. Oliver says. She looks at her watch. "Our time is over. There's my next patient."

She shakes Carl's hand again. "Thanks for your help."

"I didn't help you much."

"You know Lenny's problem. Bye. - Mrs. Harroway! Nice to see you! Come in!" She is talking to her next patient, an elderly woman with rabbit eyes, who slinks upstairs and past Carl, ignoring him.

Oh, he knows this ignoring and looking away. Do not touch the black man, he could infect you with something. It is one of those little things you do not notice when they happen to you once, or twice, or even five times, but when they keep happening all your life, you start anticipating them, and they get really, really, really on your nerves.

This is one of the good things about Lenny. He is so used to Carl he does not care any more if he is black, or yellow, or green with red dots.

Carl's mind is so busy with the rabbit-eyed woman and Mrs. Oliver's story about Moe that he has reached his apartment already when her last, casual remark seeps into his consciousness. _You know Lenny's problem._ Huh?

The first thought that crosses his mind is that his terrible suspicion is true: Lenny turned gay and is in love with him, and, being naïve and trustful, he told Mrs. Pocahontas Superclever about it.

Carl suspects something like this for years. It is so embarrassing. For _Lenny_. And therefore also for Carl, who is ashamed vicariously for his friend.

Poor old Lenny. He would be better off if he was less emotional and more … dammit, more mature. Why does he have to be such a drama queen? Why can he not see how ridiculous that makes him? Why can he not behave like a grown up man instead like a seventeen year old girl? Running to a therapist, throwing in pills demonstratively, whining about poison, making a fuss and a drama of his useless life.

Suddenly all Carl wants is to land Lenny one.

He bears him a grudge anyway since Las Vegas. On that trip, he got a Lenny overdose. All this sharing of secrets and being together for days on end, well, you can almost call it _intimately_ – not in a sexual way, but the word fits. It was just the kind of thing Lenny likes.

* * *

Carl does not call Lenny after visiting Mrs. Oliver. When he meets him the next day at work, he is hostile and elliptical. There is a sad expression on Lenny's face, but the next moment it is gone, and Lenny acts like everything was normal.

Carl notices how careful and gentle Lenny treats him. He avoids everything that could increase Carl's anger. Carl notices for the first time, this is not the result of spineless intimidation, but of life-long routine. Carl has acted like a douchebag before – often enough. Lenny learned to make the best of it.

This patience, this acceptance infuriates Carl even more. He can do nothing, because Lenny, sensing it, retreats even more. He spends most of the shift in Homer's room, and at lunch he sits together with Charlie and his pals at the other end of the cafeteria, leaving Carl alone with his bad mood and a voracious Homer.

In the evening, Carl gets drunk and races down Springfield's main street. He does not get far: A police car tailgates him with flashing lights and howling sirens.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Carl brakes and bumps into a lamp-post. The glass and the light bulb fall on his engine hood.

"Well, well, well!" wheezes Chief Wiggum while unplugging his body sideways from the police car.

Carl slurs when they ask him his name. He falls down when they make him balance on the curb. The result: His driver's license is taken away for one year.

So the next morning he has to go by bus. The bus does not stop at the power plant. The nearest stop is half a mile away. Carl has to walk along Industrial Way on the grass at the side, and that at 5.30 on a freezing cold, windy March morning. He made the mistake not to put on a jacket, not being used to walking more than the distance between parking lot and main entrance.

Lenny drives past him and brakes so suddenly he almost slides into a turnip field.

"Carl! Get in!"

Carl slumps on the passenger seat, glad for the warmth.

"What are you doing here?"

"I had to go by bus."

"What happened to your car?"

"The damned cops took my driver's license."

"Why didn't you call me? I would have picked you up at your house."

"That would have been a detour for you, and fuel isn't cheap ..."

"Cut that shit! You know I don't mind!" Lenny gives Carl a reproachful look.

Carl runs his hands over his face. Meanwhile he is terribly sorry for being so grumpy to Lenny. For being so often grumpy to Lenny he developed an emergency plan. Lenny's flaws are not so bad he deserves this.

* * *

From now on Lenny picks Carl up and also drives him back home. Carl is amiable like their friendship was in best order again, but Lenny knows him too well to rely on this.

And indeed, the next weeks become a nightmare. Carl cannot decide if he wants to be a friend or an enemy. He ridicules Lenny at work and gets their co-workers to laugh at him. Lenny is angry. Carl pats his shoulders and says it was only fun. "Come on, don't be so tetchy."

He drinks more than usual. He gets plastered on the morning of a late shift day and vomits into Lenny's car when they drive to work. Lenny patiently maneuvers his half-unconscious friend into the power plant. When Mr. Burns comes into their room on his inspection tour, Lenny distracts him from Carl, who sits slumped in his chair and is unable to do anything sensible.

The next morning, a hung-over Carl hands Lenny a bunch of flowers with a little card attached to it, saying _Thank You_. Lenny is surprised. People usually do not give him flowers, and Carl never did before. Lenny blushes and stutters. He also forgets to fill the vase with water, so that when coming from work he finds the flowers wilted and shriveled.

Carl obviously regrets giving him those flowers. He switches off his phone during their days off, although he asked Lenny to call him, because he wanted to take him to the birthday party of an acquaintance. Lenny later finds out Carl went to this party alone and had a jolly good time.

Lenny dines at Krustyburger's, alone. There must have been something in the not-too-fresh salad, or in the dubious meat. Lenny has to spend four days in hospital. Everyone visits him, except Carl, who allegedly has no time. After getting a ticking-off from Homer and Moe, he shows up on the last day and flirts with the nurses.

Lenny is released as healthy the next morning, but the queasy feeling will not go away. He has to be careful when eating at the cafeteria, or half an hour after the lunch break he has to retreat to the restroom to be sick. He also cannot hold much liquor any more. Half a bottle of beer is enough to give him an unpleasant whirring, followed by an even more unpleasant headache. For someone who drinks out of habit this is annoying. Lenny does not know what else to do than to drink.

Carl feels sorry and guilty. He visits Lenny with a stack of videos. "Let's have a quiet evening at home." He also brings him a tin can with herbal tea. "My aunt says it's great for upset stomachs."

Lenny is afraid to say 'Thank you'.

* * *

All the time, Carl flirts with anything that moves. Mostly unsuccessfully. "You're really nice, Mr. Carlson, but ..."

Like every bully, Carl could name six reasons in one breath, but actually does not know why he is doing what he is doing. Such things develop a sweeping dynamic. Flirting for example.

Him and Lenny hang out at the mall. The bench they are sitting on happens to be close to a gym, and they while away the useless time of which they have so much by commenting the people going in and coming out. Carl beams his sweetest smile at the women and compliments them, which they answer with snorting and giggling.

When he jokingly whistles at some middle aged ladies in snug gym clothes, he gains their full attention. They gather round the bench for a chat. Carl is most charming, while Lenny quietly eats his ice cream.

Lenny hopes the women will go away. They are of the spoiled rich wife type with false eyelashes and two-hundred Dollar leggings. They talk too loud and laugh too loud. Being ignored himself, Lenny notices the fear-laced curiosity they ogle Carl with. The only black people they talked to until now were probably their gardeners and cleaning women. Does Carl not notice?

One of the ladies says something naughty to Carl, and this makes them laugh even louder.

The grumpy face of the gym owner appears behind them. "My clients are complaining about you!" he says sternly to Lenny and Carl.

"But we're just sitting here eating ice cream."

"You're molesting my clients."

"They're not molesting us!" one of the ladies says. "Come on, Irv, who complains about those nice young men?"

"If you haven't cleared off in five minutes, I'll call the police."

"Aww, Irv, really!"

"Five minutes!" he repeats stubbornly.

People have gathered behind the large window of the gym and stare. Passers-by stop and look.

One of the ladies says genially, "Come on, join us. We were just about to have a little champagne brunch after our work-out."

"With pleasure." Carl links arms with two of them.

Lenny follows quietly, his hands in his pockets.

The motley group stops at a little bar. After an hour, one lady after the other says good-bye and zooms off to other appointments. Except for one who nervously digs her cellphone out of her handbag and checks the display with an annoyed sigh.

"My husband has stood me up. Again. He's probably sitting on the copier in his office right now, with his pants down and his new trainee giving him a blow-job. Uhm, sorry. Don't want to get on your nerves with my personal matters."

"Never mind," Carl says generously. "We'll drive you home. Lenny?"

"Okay."

Lenny drives into the posh part of Springfield, with Carl and the woman whispering and giggling on the backseat. In front of her house, she says, "Come in for a cocktail!"

"No, thank you," Lenny says, and finds himself alone in the car moments later. He takes a deep breath. "Don't think I'll wait for you, my friend!" he says. "Getting home is your problem." He starts the engine and drives off.

Two clear thoughts follow him. _I'm fed up. I have to get away._ He ponders about the unthinkable: Giving up his job in the nuclear power plant and leaving Springfield, his home, his old life, Carl, Homer, everything, even Moe's Tavern.

Maybe he should try a prolonged holiday first. Rent a cabin in the mountains for two or three months, not take his cellphone with him, and write another novel.

Yeah. And when he comes back, Carl will be married to the next Erinye, Homer will be balder and fatter, Barney will be in hospital with the next liver failure, and the nuclear power plant will have drifted closer to a worst case scenario on an upward bound exponential curve of amassed cracks and leaks and human failures. Nothing gets ever better.

Lenny is so fed up with it all.

* * *

Annabel, that is her name, leads Carl into a living room that is larger than most houses he had been in until now.

The things in this room do not fit together. All the varnished stones, contorted twigs in vases and porcelain ducks were probably her idea. The antlers screwed to the wall hint at her husband. So does the cabinet with guns, and the bookshelf next to it. A glance at the books tells Carl that guy has a thing for fascism. He even has Hitler's book there - in German. Probably only to show off with it when his chums visit him. Carl knows a thing or two about languages. Being a fascist is not enough when you want to learn German properly.

After some cocktails they pass on to hard liquors. Annabel complains about her husband, who has cheated on her with every female employee of his company. He has not smiled at her for twenty years. He did not come home from a hunting trip when their son died of leukemia.

Then she becomes silly. "No more whining! Life goes on!" She kisses Carl when he does not expect it, spilling whiskey on his pants.

After making out for a minute or so, they move to the bedroom.

Carl cannot stop thinking of Lenny. He heard him race off when Annabel and him walked up the garden path. Where did he go? To Moe, to soak his brain in alcohol? If he does so, he will vomit again. Poor Lenny, he still looks as shaky as he did when Carl visited him in hospital. Poor Lenny. He must be feeling horrible right now. Deserted and humiliated. Carl can see the quiet reproach in his eyes like Lenny was standing in front of him. Suddenly he loathes himself.

Annabel's hands slide off him. Something is wrong. Carl looks at her. Something about him must have scared her. The woman is rigid like she was taxidermised and stares with lackluster black triangles up to him.

He is pretty drunk, so he just sits on the side of the bed and looks at the condom box lying next to the whiskey bottle. He does not remember bringing the whiskey here. He finally realizes it is a different bottle. Then he realizes it has been a while since Annabel went to the bathroom.

He wants to go home. First, he has to use the bathroom. He knocks at the door. No answer. He opens it and finds Annabel sitting in the bathtub, slumped over like somebody threw her into it. Her hair is hanging in front of her face. Stepping closer, Carl sees the blood which drips from her arms and clogs the drain. A razor blade is swimming on it.

His immediate reaction is shock. Seeing she is breathing ends it. He feels no pity at all. She has insulted him by thinking he is so disgusting she has to kill herself for touching him. He is so angry he does not give her a second look. He just walks out of the bathroom.

His conscience forces him at least to call an ambulance. After that, he slips out of the house, leaving the door open, and walks away.

The ambulance swooshes past him. A few minutes later, he hears it coming back with blaring sirens.

Carl retreats into a little café.

"Hey, loverboy, wipe your face. Half of the whore you're coming from still sticks to it," the waitress says with a husky, but not unfriendly voice.

Carl looks into the restroom mirror and sees a clown. The thick layer of make-up, under which Annabel was old enough to be his mother, has rubbed off on him.

* * *

The next morning Lenny rings Carl's doorbell. He is pale and looks like he encountered a ghost. Carl lets him in and goes into the kitchen to prepare a drink for him.

Meanwhile Carl lives in a larger and more comfortable apartment. That horrible attic chamber had only been a temporary solution.

"Carl, my car is confetti. Strewn along five miles of railroad track."

"How did that happen?"

It turns out Lenny approached a railroad crossing when the lights started to blink. He regarded this as a challenge and stepped on the gas, but was not fast enough. The barriers came down and hemmed him in. Lenny stepped on the gas again and tried to break through, but his car only skidded off the road and on the tracks. The train was approaching at 200 mph, so Lenny got out and jumped over the barrier, only a second before there was a nasty crash behind him. He cowered on the street, his arms over his head to protect himself from the flying splinters, and all he could think was, _Fuck, my handbag is still in there!_ Everybody in the waiting cars stared at him.

Carl is still stuck in a shocked trance from his adventure the day before. Looking at his friend, who perches shaking and miserable on his couch, ends the trance abruptly. Carl cannot help it: He gets hopping mad. It just … it just was so predictable. Every time he has to rely on Lenny, this idiot does something stupid and screws everything up. Carl is also bothered to no end by what he perceives as lack of backbone. Lenny comes running straight to him for support and comfort, only hours after Carl treated him so mean it made Lenny drive off revving his engine.

"Man, Lenny, was that necessary? Now I have to find someone else who will drive me to work!"

"You know, I could be dead now!"

"That's because you're the most inept driver of this town. Racing over a crossing when the barriers come down already. How can anyone be so stupid!"

"You're the right one to complain, DUI guy! What happened two weeks ago? Huh? Huh?"

"You're still worse. You don't even need to be drunk to drive like a maniac!"

Lenny is deeply hurt. This is none of their usual quarrels. This time Carl is really mean. There is an impatient, condescending tone in his voice. You do not talk like this to a friend. Especially not after he almost died.

"Maybe I should have stayed in that car!" Lenny screams. "Would have solved a few problems!"

"I think so, too!" Carl says, who does not think at all. Otherwise he would not have said something so cruel.

"Okay." Lenny puts down his glass and gets up. "Thanks a lot for your hospitality."

Carl expects him to slam the door when he walks out, but Lenny does not, and that scares Carl more than a good old slam would have.

He calls Lenny up and excuses, and Lenny says it is okay. They meet at Moe's. Carl excuses again, and Lenny again says it is okay.

Carl wants to tell him what happened the day before, but he cannot get out a single word. He feels like a murderer. He wonders if it is him, and not Lenny, who is messed up in the head and needs therapy.

He learns from the papers Annabel was sent to a mental clinic. Carl waits for the police to show up at his door, but nothing happens. No one seems interested in who called the ambulance. Not even the fascist gun owner.

Carl figured out by now the woman must have had serious problems, and that was why she tried to kill herself, not disgust for him. Still, there must have been something about him that made her snap. He suspects it was him being so absent-minded. He got accused of emotional cruelty often enough. Although never in such a drastic way.

Drastic indeed. This experience has shaken his ego like an earthquake would a cooling tower. He becomes cautious. The flirting stops. He is fed up with women.

Instead, he catches himself wondering: Who is Lenny Leonard? He catches himself watching his friend, in a cautious, casual way.

Behind his sarcastic facade Carl loves Lenny to bits and pieces. In a non-gay way. Because Lenny is … well, he is just Lenny. He screams "Daddyyyyy is home!", when his Chihuahua comes running. He does not get jokes. He giggles and weeps when he is drunk. He is insistent that he was abducted by slobbering aliens with giant eyes. One eye per alien, that is. According to the tale Lenny tells again and again, he found himself in a brightly lit room strapped to a table. They took samples of his body tissues and implanted a transmitter into him before beaming him back into his garden, where he woke up stark naked in a foxglove bed.

He is addicted to wearing suspenders. (Meanwhile Carl suspects a mild fetish. After all, they are made of rubber.) The novels he writes are much too clever for a thriller series. They are so revealing. Reading them, Carl realized his friend has a deeper and more complex personality than he assumed. Knowing someone since he was six, but still not knowing him … What else is Lenny hiding?

Carl regards Lenny as his more sensitive _alter ego_. Actually he wants to protect him, but again and again he is mean to him instead. Lenny looks at him with those trustful puppy eyes, and suddenly Carl's mindset tilts, and he has to say something sarcastic. Something childish and stupid. Something that will quench this trustful look.

Carl has been like this to everyone who played a role in his life. He always explained it as strive for freedom and was proud to be such a rebel, but to be honest, he cannot control it. It controls him.

In Lenny's case it is less a strive for freedom and more an attempt to keep him under. Carl wants him to be less happy, less successful and less self-confident than himself. Most of all, he wants him to stay the same, out of sheer laziness – because if Lenny changed, Carl would have to adapt, or to look for a new best friend. And he would find none.

It did not work. It was Lenny, not Carl, who had some success by writing novels, and he keeps writing them, although Carl compulsively distracts him as soon as he learns Lenny works on a novel again. Carl talks him into all kinds of excursions and enterprises that lead him away from his keyboard.

All he managed was to make Lenny unhappy. To make anyone unhappy. Yes, he is better than Lenny in starting love affairs, but he is also better in messing them up. That is all he can look back to now: divorces and broken hearts.

No, he is not a jerk with a heart of gold who is afraid of his true feelings. He is just a jerk.

A thoughtful jerk of late.

* * *

By chance he meets Mrs. Oliver in a bakery. It is raining cats and dogs, and she says, "Let's have a coffee and wait till the streets are passable again."

They sit down at one of the tables along the window.

"This feels a little strange," Carl says to break the ice. "I hardly know you, but you probably know everything about me. I bet, Lenny talks about me 24/7."

"No, he avoids mentioning you. But let's not talk about your friend this time, okay?" Mrs. Oliver says. "Professional discretion."

Instead, she talks about Moe. "Such a weather would keep even him from lurking in other people's gardens." She asks Carl if Moe ever got into trouble for staring into windows. How often he was in prison. If he has a girlfriend. "I wouldn't mind if he came for his camera."

She talks in a joking tone, but Carl gets the impression she really has a thing for Moe. She would not be the first highly intelligent chick who has a thing for him. Must be scientific interest in something rare and disgusting.

Carl looks out of the window and spots a thin guy with an ugly umbrella standing at the other side of the street and staring at him and Mrs. Oliver. It is dark from all the rainclouds. The shade of the umbrella hides the guy's face. An ugly jacket is wrapped around his body. Still, he looks familiar.

He turns and walks away, and his walk is definitely that of Lenny.

Mrs. Oliver looks out of the window, too. "The rain has almost stopped. I think I'll reach my car without getting soaked now. Oh, one more thing: The next time you're about to say something sarcastic to him – don't. Bye!"

She wedges a dollar bill under her coffee cup, beams a smile at Carl and rushes out with her shopping bags.

Carl is not sure if she meant Moe or Lenny with 'him'.

She must be doing that on purpose. Taking people by surprise to make them wonder.

Carl decides to forget her remark, only because she wanted him to remember it.

* * *

Tonight, he, Lenny and Homer have arranged to meet at Barney's Bowl-O-Rama.

Homer is happy when Krusty and his pet monkey show up and try to bowl, although both are too drunk. Homer films them with his cellphone camera. "YouTube, here comes Krusty!"

Krusty, lying on his back, shouts something about a copyright for slipping-on-the-bowling-alley gags. He tries to get up and hit Homer, but falls down again. Mr. Teeny VII., his monkey, has given up already and lies on the neighboring alley like a hunting trophy.

Carl walks to Lenny, who sits at a table hidden behind a rubber tree and picks at a huge sundae. Half-molten strawberry and caramel ice cream flow together. It does not look appetizing any more.

"Hey, Lenny."

"Carl, I'm ready to be your best man a fourth time, but I will count the days."

"The days?"

"Until you get divorced."

"What do you mean? I'm not going to marry again."

"What about my shrink? Would be the ideal match. You two could make fun about me behind my back."

Lenny's ability to jump to conclusions is so breathtaking Carl is awe-struck for some moments. He is about to say something like, _Now you're completely nuts. You're suffering from a persecution complex!_ But then he recalls Mrs. Oliver's voice. _The next time you're about to say something __sarcastic to him – don't._

He sits down opposite to Lenny and says patiently, "Lenny, if I married every woman I met by chance in a bakery, I would have a harem like a pharaoh."

"She is exactly your kind of woman."

"But I'm not her kind of man." Carl lowers his voice. "She has a thing for Moe."

"Oh, has she!"

"Yeah, she talked about him all the time."

"Oh, really!" Lenny's voice drips with sarcasm.

Carl has to admit this is hard to believe. "Uh, she probably mistook 'being a pervert' with 'having an enormous libido'. Although as a psychiatrist she should know better."

"Hmm." Lenny is not fully convinced.

Carl rubs his arm. "Come on, Lenny. Nice you want to be my best man. Makes me almost regret it's not necessary. But I swear it is _not_ necessary."

Lenny smiles a fragile smile. "I have to excuse. Carl Carlson, screwing my girlfriends since high school. I thought you would go on with my shrink."

Carl looks at him, his hand still on Lenny's arm. Suddenly he says, "She will not help you. No shrink will."

"Yeah, I suspected that much."

Carl does not know what else to say. Finally he manages, "Now stop picking at that yucky ice cream and come back to the alleys. You miss all the fun."

Meanwhile the police have arrived in form of Officers Lou and Eddie. They try to pick Krusty up, with the result that all three of them fall down in a heap.

* * *

One evening in April there is no one else in Moe's Tavern but Sam and Larry when Carl walks in.

Although hanging out in the same tavern with them for years, he hardly knows anything of those guys other than their names. He is not even sure which one is 'Sam' and which one is 'Larry'.

Having no one else to talk to, Carl takes his beer mug and sits down at their table.

First, they are taciturn and ogle the intruder, squinting their eyes. When Carl pays some beer for them, they warm up, but tell him a lot of random nonsense. Living on social welfare and drinking day in, day out has affected their brains.

For some drunken dimwits who hardly leave their favorite tavern they know a lot of gossip. They prove to be especially well informed about what is going on in 'The League of Extra-Horny Gentlemen', the gay club down the street. Carl never assumed they would be interested in Springfield's gay scene at all.

"We sometimes sit on the bench opposite to the 'League' and watch them," the guy with the basecap and the glasses – probably Sam – says.

"It's like going to the zoo. Only for free," Larry adds.

"It's a real peacock parade when they queue up at the entrance. Gays are terribly vain, you know."

Some of the vain gay men were not above having a chat with the alcoholics on the bench, thus delivering them more bits of delicious information.

"They have a secret code, did you know?" Sam asks Carl rhetorically.

"Like the Freemasons," Larry adds.

"The way you let your hanky hang out of your pocket tells them if you dig, for example, getting pissed on or so."

"Not my kinda stuff, but everybody as he likes, as I always say." Larry empties his beer mug.

"Since Larry and me know this, we always put our hankies away when we walk past the 'League'. To play it safe."

"Yeah, you can get into trouble not knowing their code."

"Like Lenny. They nearly kicked him out."

"Yes, because he did not know their code. As I said. It can get you into trouble."

"Wait a moment," Carl says. "Which Lenny are you talking about?"

Four owl eyes look at him. "You know him best."

"_Our_ Lenny? The one who hangs out at this tavern?"

"Yeah. Thin guy, suspenders, always looks hung over ..."

"What the hell is he doing in a gay club?"

It takes Carl much patience to get the story out of these two. They are masters of digression. He has to keep asking, and to pay more beer for them.

What he finally pieces together, is this: Lenny wondered if he might swung a little that way. The proof of the pudding is the eating! So he went into the 'League' and found himself surrounded by men half his age and four times as good looking, according to the standards of the gay scene at least.

He made a complete fool of himself. The pretty boys were flabbergasted when they found themselves accosted by some middle-aged guy in casual clothes, who obviously did not really know what he was asking for.

One man finally pretended pity and took Lenny home with him. There he dropped his pants and presented what he was famous for in the gay scene not only of this town, but from here to Honolulu: SIZE. Lenny went pale.

"Don't worry," the man grinned. "I'll be gentle with your little ass. It will only _hurt like hell_."

Lenny jumped out of the window and ran.

Still rolling on the floor with laughter, his almost-lover called up his friends. Within hours, the story went viral.

* * *

So this is the explanation for Lenny's sprained ankle, his guilty expression and the detours he insists on when they are walking to Moe's. He wants to avoid passing the 'League'.

Carl is not surprised. This sounds a lot like Lenny. He is good in getting himself into situations that are painfully awkward.

When this story will seep from the gay scene into the other scenes, it will be regarded as Lenny's official coming out of the closet. And, logically, also as Carl's. "Have you heard? Lenny and Carl are _really_ gay …!" - "I _knew_ it!"

The prospect of getting dragged out of a closet he had not been in in the first place makes Carl less angry than he thought.

* * *

He has a strange dream. Homer causes a meltdown, and Carl has to evacuate the nuclear power plant. His co-workers are reluctant to leave. Some want to eat their sandwiches first, some want to safe their family photos, some simply do not comprehend that they are in danger, in spite of the smoke, in spite of the shrilling bells.

Finally Carl has driven them out onto the parking lot – but Lenny is missing. Carl has to go back into the blazing, contaminated carcass of the plant to find him.

Lenny is in a small room in the remotest part of the containment building, cowering between boxes and barrels. The air is thick and green from radioactivity.

"Get out, man, get out!"

Somehow they are on the parking lot a moment later. Carl wraps a blanket around Lenny and says, "Now I got it too." As Lenny does not react, he repeats, "Now I've got the same problem." Lenny still says nothing. Carl wakes up, feeling tense and drained.

* * *

Him and Lenny becoming a couple would not be the worst thing in the world.

No, Carl is not gay. He would not have come up with this on his own. But if something is offered to him for free, he does not mind it being a bit _queer_.

And there is _a lot _offered to him. After three divorces, Carl knows what to look for in a partner. Personality-wise, Lenny is just right to stay with him until they grow old and die. He admires Carl, but not to the point of dull submission. Carl hates boring people. He also hates people who are so jaunty they make _him_ look boring. Lenny is just right.

When you are fed up with adventures, knowing each other very well becomes an advantage. Carl could cut out all the lying and all the pretending to be someone nicer. He would not need to go through all the cumbersome courtship business once again.

Being of the same gender is an advantage, too. They have more in common. Lenny is easier to understand than a girlfriend, and easier to jolly along. Instead of talking everything over endlessly, and then talking it over again, they would beat the shit out of each other, make up and go to a game. (Try that with a wife, and you get reported for domestic violence.)

Then, finally, Carl has a soft side hidden somewhere. Secretly he enjoys being loved so much. It feels so good. Lenny is amiable when he is treated right. When he is in the mood for it, he is overflowing with quirky kindness and does not ask for much in return.

Carl used to think Lenny was a loser because he has no luck with women. Now Carl is not so sure anymore. Lenny's real problem could be that he would get much better along with a man. With Carl, that is. There is a huge reservoir of banked up gentleness, and Carl might be the one who has the key to the gate.

This is when the thing gets scary.

The idea of having sex with his friend feels weird. Not uncomfortable – weird. Carl cannot focus his mind on the thought. His normally determined imagination wanders off. All he can think of is harmless making out. Maybe because he can rely on memories here.

He had to kiss Lenny when they were fourteen and played 'Spin the bottle' on someone's birthday party. On the same occasion Lenny had to kiss Homer, and Homer had to kiss Kirk van Houten.

Some years later, Lenny and Carl had to kiss each other after losing a bet. They made a show of it to amuse their peers, faking Romeo-and-Juliet passion, calling each other 'darling' and 'precious' and swearing theatrically they would go to hell and back for each other. Everybody pissed their pants with laughter. Lenny laughed too, but he also blushed. Carl was surprised it did not feel wrong. It was like kissing a girl, just the same.

Under the right circumstances he could imagine possibly doing that again. It would not be the worst thing in the world.

… Wait a moment. Is he daydreaming about him and Lenny making out?

You were cooler in the nineties, Carl Carlson …

* * *

He says to Lenny, "I'll lend you my car until I get my driver's license back. Then you have enough time to save up money for a new car. Under the condition that you drive me to work and such."

"You know my luck, Carl. I'll only manage another crash."

"But now my car is standing around uselessly, while we have to walk."

"Give it to your sister."

Carl makes some more attempts to convince Lenny, but to no avail. Carl knows why. Lenny is still unsettled by his ruthless remarks about his near-death experience.

Carl is about to say, 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.' It seems too sarcastic. He becomes quiet. Lenny becomes quiet, too.

And so Lenny continues to do his shoppings by walking to the Kwik-E-Mart pulling a trolley with squeaking wheels. For the way to work he is carpooling with Charlie and another guy, while Carl gets picked up by Homer.

* * *

One evening they are at Carl's place and watch 'Ice Age'. They know the movie. When watching it the first time, they fell off the couch laughing, and Lenny got Coca Cola into his nose.

This time Carl is bored. Lenny chuckles a bit. Then there is the sad scene with the mammoth grieving for his family. Lenny falls very, very silent. Without looking at him, Carl thinks, _Oh no_.

Lenny seems to get over it, but minutes later there is a commercial break. Carl goes to the bathroom. Meanwhile all those young and beautiful people who drive magnificent cars and eat tasty snacks give Lenny's emotional balance the final kick. He tosses his beer can into the pop corn bowl and buries his face in his hands.

Finding him like this, Carl first thinks he is sick. "The bathroom is free now."

Lenny shakes his head without taking it out of his hands.

"I'll open the window." The scents of an April evening flood the room. "Better?"

Lenny sobs desperately.

Carl finally grasps the situation. "Oh, Lenny." He mutes the TV and sits down next to his friend. "That's just a movie. All will end well, remember?" He pats Lenny's shoulders. After a moment of hesitation, he runs his hand over Lenny's back, more affectionately than he ever did.

Lenny stops sobbing.

Carl goes on running his hand over Lenny's back and shoulders. It feels good. It feels really good. Something inside Carl melts, and there is a tingling in his stomach.

This goes on for one minute, two, three.

Finally, Lenny leans back with a sigh. Carl puts an arm around him and squeezes him a bit.

"Now better?"

"Hmm."

Lenny's hands are sticky from tears. Carl gives him a tissue. He switches on the sound again and reaches for the pop corn bowl. The pop corn is soaked with beer. Carl eats it, dripping beer over his pullover.

When the movie is over, they still sit there like this. Carl holds the pop corn bowl in his lap. Lenny squeezes the tissue, which has turned into papier mâché, and has put one foot against the couch table. The window is still open, and the room is cold.

"Lenny?"

"Hmm?"

"Is it true you went into that gay club?"

"Yes, basically," Lenny says sleepily. "It depends on whose version of the story you heard."

"Sam's and Larry's."

"Who are Sam and … Oh, I know. Then even those guys are already in on this?"

"And I was not." There is mild reproach in Carl's voice.

"Carl, don't worry. I am not gay. I know this for sure now."

"You went with this guy."

"He just hurt me. I didn't like it."

"Did he at least use a condom?"

"Naah, we didn't go that far. We did almost nothing."

"Almost nothing, but it hurt?"

"I'm really not gay, Carl. I bet you're relieved now."

Carl has his arm still around Lenny.

He puts away the pop corn bowl.

"We should shut the window," Lenny gasps. "It's getting cold."

He gets up from the couch, closes the window and sits down again, on a part of the couch that feels cool under him.

Carl says, "To tell the truth, Lenny, I thought it over lately."

"Thought it over?"

"Yeah. What the heck. Everybody thinks we're gay anyway. Why not make the best of it?"

"What?" Lenny's eyes freeze to large glass balls. The reflections of the floor lamp smolder in them. "Whaa_aaat_?!" His voice lifts off like a rocket and reaches unknown heights of squeakiness.

Carl is not sure what he expected, but it was something else than this.

"I don't want pity from you!" Lenny jumps to his feet. "Everybody can pity me! Everybody! Your parents! My parents! Homer and Marge! Our co-workers! The bums in the gutter! The whole town can pity me! The whole world! The Emperor of China! God! _But! You! Must! Not! Pity! Me!_"

He points at Carl with every word. He looks so crazy Carl is afraid to say anything, and even holds his breath.

Lenny runs out of the flat and down the staircase. The front door thunders shut.

_What the hell was that?_ Carl tries to remember what he said. Something inconsiderate and incredibly stupid. And Lenny, on top of that, got it wrong.

Carl opens the window and leans out. "Lenny?" But there are only the street lamps and the rain, which has started to fall softly. Lenny can run like a hare if he wants to.

Carl does not get much sleep this night. Lenny going off the deep end has knocked him totally over. It is like Lenny hit an iron bar over his head.

No, Carl is not angry. He is too confused to know what he feels.

One should think Lenny would be overjoyed getting offered something the whole town knows he wants for years. Instead, he is insulted.

Maybe the whole town is wrong, and Lenny is straight as a ruler and a homophobe.

Carl knows this is not the right explanation.

What is it then?

* * *

Something strange happens the next day at work. Lenny pretends everything was okay. He is so determined not to talk about the last evening Carl cannot talk about it either. Anyway, Carl is still too confused to say anything sensible. So he goes with the flow and says nothing.

An almost fatal mistake.

Because just then Artie Ziff falls out of the sky and back into the life of Marge Simpson, and Lenny and Carl get dragged into the chain of events.

* * *

They dimly remember Artie from high school. His family name was not 'Ziff' back then, but something long and Russian beginning with 'Ziv'. He was a little bespectacled nerd, a few years younger than them – the same age like Marge. Lenny, Carl, Homer and their friends sometimes bullied him, but not much, because he was too insensitive and too self-centered to suffer in an amusing way.

Marge never bullied him. Marge never bullied anyone. Maybe that was why Artie got so obsessed with her. That and, of course, her being one of the prettiest girls in school.

Marge married Homer, and Artie wandered off to Silicon Valley. He was not heard of for years.

* * *

Then he is suddenly in the news as one of the richest men in America. Only hours later, he puts up a boastful show by landing in the Simpsons' garden with a helicopter, blowing tiles from the neighbors' roofs and chopping notches into their trees. Especially Ned Flanders' roof and trees.

(Carl will later say to Lenny, "He must have known her address all along.")

The whole story is more complex. What Lenny and Carl mostly notice is an excited Homer, who jumps around behind his T-437 Safety Console and tells them he will get a million bucks for letting his wife spend a weekend with "that rich computer guy".

Lenny and Carl stand at the door with their coffee mugs, both silently thankful for Homer, who distracts them from their own problems.

"Uh, Homer?" Carl finally says. "You know what 'spending the weekend' means?"

"No, no, no! I made that clear. No funny stuff with Marge!"

"And he still wants to pay a million? Only for looking at her?" Lenny asks.

"He thinks he can impress her with his riches." Homer laughs. "But that won't work. I know my Marge. It's the inner values that count for her!" He leans back in his chair.

Lenny and Carl exchange one of their looks. And then quickly look away.

After work, Homer is still in such a splendid mood he shoves his two friends into his car and drives straight to Moe's with them. He is talking during the whole drive and does not notice the silence on the back seat.

At Moe's he goes on boasting with the one million dollars he will get. Lenny and Carl, who got more talkative after having some beer, and Moe banter him about selling his wife, and about how lonely he will be after she eloped with that attractive contender. They do not mean it. They all know how devoted Marge is to Homer. Especially Moe knows that.

But Homer suddenly gets his shocked-toddler-expression. "Oh, God, you're right! I've got to get her back before it's too late!" And before anyone can say anything, he runs out of the tavern.

"Shoot!" Lenny says. "He took that seriously!"

Moe grumbles and rubs the counter with a cloth. Carl drinks his beer.

"Now he will do something stupid," Lenny says.

"Yeah. Kick Zivkovkovitshskys nerdy ass. Or what his name is," Carl says.

* * *

Homer is missing at work the next day. He wrote Lenny a SMS.

"He is in Silicon Valley," Lenny explains to Mr. Smithers.

Smithers fumes with rage, but he can do nothing. He cannot fire the organ banks from sector 7, because he cannot hire substitutes. They would be dead within months. A team of scientists found out lately that everybody working in sector 7 possesses a rare set of genes which in response to the conditions in the nuclear power plant mutated, making their possessors immune to radioactivity and almost immortal.

There are side effects. Carl was close when he joked in Las Vegas about Lenny developing x-ray eyes. Lenny can see a strange color others cannot see. He named it 'electric blue' and describes it as "similar to Cherenkov radiation, only more ... uh, Cherenkov-like". Blobs of it are on the pure white walls in Carl's new apartment. Lenny traced them with a pencil, until Carl took the pencil away from him. "Stop scrawling on my freshly painted walls!"

Smithers growls, "Okay. Silicon Valley. Nice place. I bet, Mr. Simpson has important things to do there."

"He has to save his marriage."

"Well. I just wish everybody could get used to let me know a few days in advance when some marital desaster necessitates a journey to an interesting part of the U.S.A. It's difficult to operate a nuclear power plant with fifty per cent of the staff."

"Yes, Mr. Smithers." Lenny rubs the tip of his shoe on the floor.

When Smithers is gone, Carl thinks about saying to Lenny, 'What the heck, he can't fire us. Just show him your middle finger when he gets on your nerves.' But talking to Lenny has gotten hard for him since that certain evening. Carl only addresses him when someone else is in the room with them, and avoids being alone with Lenny anyway.

So he strolls out and into Homer's control center, where he sits down and voluntarily does Homer's job. (Which means, he voluntarily eats Homer's donuts.) After an hour he glances through the window to Lenny. Lenny has figured out the situation and parked his swivel chair in the middle of the room, so he can watch his own and Carl's monitors at the same time, doing both their jobs. He has his back turned to the window and his hands folded behind his head.

* * *

Homer returns from Silicon Valley in a pitiable condition. He still wears the same smelly clothes. He is unshaved. He is deeply distraught.

Sitting in Moe's Tavern, he runs his hands over his bald head and laments. It seems like their cruel jokes came true: Homer spotted Marge and Artie kissing passionately on some fake prom the millionaire had organised.

Hearing this, they all feel betrayed. They made pejorative remarks about it, but secretly they always admired the persistency of Homer's marriage. They all knew this was something rare, something absent especially from their own lifes.

If Marge had to elope with another man, why in all the world did that man have to be Artie Ziff? Why not one of _them_?

Lenny tries to comfort Homer, saying he does not believe it, there must be a misconception, Marge would not really run away. Or if she really did, she would soon regret it and come back. What is a woman like her supposed to do with a computer nerd?

Carl goes to the bathroom. Coming back, he finds the tavern empty but for Moe.

"What did I miss? Anything good?"

"Homer and Lenny went to leave town and never come back."

"Did they?" Carl climbs on his favorite barstool. "Gimme another Duff."

The tavern is so quiet they hear the rats rustle behind the paneling. Carl runs his index finger around the brim of his mug.

"Will you stop that! The sound makes my bowels cringe!" Moe suddenly screams at him.

Carl goes home, downs a whiskey and goes to bed. He tells himself there is no reason to worry. He knows Lenny. He knows Homer. They will be back in a few days.

But Homer was really desperate this time. And Lenny ... Carl refuses to think about Lenny and falls asleep.

* * *

The next day Carl avoids Smithers, because he does not want to be the one who breaks the happy news to him that Homer and Lenny will not come to work.

Instead, Smithers breaks the happy news to him he is promoted to safety inspector. "Mr. Simpson quitted his job. By weeping on my answering machine. That's not legally binding, but he will be absent from his workplace nevertheless. So here. Have fun." He drops the fourteen pound instruction manual for the safety console into Carl's arms.

Carl staggers backwards, clutching the manual. "And Mr. Leonard?" he gasps.

"Quitted, too. You didn't know?" Smithers' glasses sparkle maliciously.

That is when the world goes fluid and every alarm bell in Carl's mind starts to shrill. He mumbles something polite into the direction of Smithers and flees out of the room and into Homer's control center.

There he pretends paging the manual until Smithers is out of sight. Then he throws it on the floor and calls Lenny's cell phone. It rings and rings. The same on the landline.

He calls Homer's house. It is 14.30. Maybe the kids are back from school already, or Homer's Dad is there.

Indeed the receiver is hastily picked up. "Homer! Homer! Please say it's you!" a tear-swollen female voice cries.

"Sorry. It's just me, Carl. Hello, Marge."

"Oh, Carl, did Homer say anything to you where he wanted to go _exactly_?"

"Leave town forever. That's all I know. Do you have any idea?"

"He seems to have applied for a job in the oil fields of West Springfield. To die there!" She starts weeping uncontrollably.

"Uh, Marge? Has he said anything about Lenny? Is Lenny going there with him?"

"What, Lenny is in on it, too? Oh, no!"

More desperate weeping. Some rumbling and scratching. Then the low, but crystal clear voice of a child.

"Lisa here. Hello, Mr. Carlson."

"Hello, Lisa. I'm sorry."

"Mr. Leonard went with my Dad to the oil fields, did I get that right?"

Carl can tell from her voice she also cried, but she has herself under control now.

He has a lot of respect for this little girl. Lenny once described her as 'angel with Einstein's brain'. A fitting description.

Lenny. Suddenly a memory pops up: Lenny sitting on a swing with Carl's baby daughter in his arms, singing 'Que sera, sera'. His singing voice is much better than you would think when hearing his speaking voice. When he sings, all the squeakiness is gone.

Carl needs a lot of willpower to keep his voice steady when answering Lisa. "He probably did."

"Artie Ziff is coming with his helicopter to pick my Mom up and fly her to the oil fields."

"When?" Carl asks, pressing a hand on his eyes.

"He should be here in half an hour."

"Thank you, Lisa."

He hangs up. Then he calls a taxi.

Smithers spots him when he rushes out of the power plant. "Mr. Carlson! I may can't fire you, but we have some nice jobs down in the cellars. Shovelling waste into barrels and killing rats, for example!" he screams.

"I quit!" Carl screams back.

He does not need this job. He will save Lenny, and they will run a catering service together. With Lenny's talent for such things it will be a success.

The taxi drives down Evergreen Terrace when the helicopter with the Ziff Corporation logo thunders over the roofs.

"Faster, man!" Carl shouts at the taxi driver.

"Jeez, yes!" The driver steps on the gas, afraid of this guy who has red eyes like a werewolf and looks like he was on the brink of a fit.

Carl drops dollar bills into the driver's lap and gets out before the taxi has come to a standstill in front of the Simpsons' house. He runs into the garden, passing Ned Flanders, who sourly looks at the chopped off beech twigs on his lawn, mumbling something about the Lord sending His locusts.

The noise from the helicopter hits Carl when he turns the corner. The helicopter stands on the lawn. The gusts coming from the rotating blades brush over the grass.

Homer's whole family is on the kitchen patio, including his Dad, who has Maggie on his arms. She reaches for the helicopter like it was a toy. Marge is busy with Bart, who screams blue murder because he wants to fly with them.

"No, no, no, Bart! This is Mommy-and Daddy-stuff. You kids stay at home and look after Grampa!"

Lisa is the only one who notices Carl. She gives him a sad and knowing little smile. He nods at her.

Marge covers her unwilling son with kisses. She hugs and kisses Lisa and ruffles her hair. She kisses Maggie and straightens her bow. She even kisses Grampa, who says, "Oh!"

Then she holds her blue hair tower down and runs to the helicopter, where Artie is standing in the door. Carl follows her. Artie gives him a puzzled look when he climbs in. It seemed like Marge has not noticed Carl's presence, but without looking back, she screams over the noise at Artie, "It's okay, he'll come with us!"

Artie shrugs. The co-pilot bangs the door shut. They lift off, with Marge waving from a window at her family.

Carl retreats into the remotest corner of the cabin and sits there for the next hours without moving, only shaking his head when a still somewhat puzzled Artie Ziff offers him a drink.

It is nothing but a polite gesture, and Artie is glad he does not need to entertain his uninvited guest. He suspects him to be one of his former high school bullies. Anyway, he feels uncomfortable around black people. (Himself being a Jew does not affect this.)

Marge leaves Carl in peace, too. He is relieved. He expected her to give him a sermon about not treating Lenny right. But she is too busy with worrying about her Homey to think of much else.

Of course they will not fly back and forth over the oil fields to find the needle in the hay stack. It would take them weeks. Artie phones up the oil company, and by applying diplomacy and alpha male bawling, he worms out of them where Homer is. "And Mr. Leonard is on the same oil rig."

"Carl, did you hear?" Marge shouts. He does not look up. Marge turns to Artie, and they talk silently for the rest of the flight.

Carl has never been a dreamer. Now a flood of memories washes him away. Lenny on the swing was only the beginning. Memories that are ten, twenty, thirty years old flare up in his mind. For the first time in ... how many years? For the first time _ever_ Carl remembers his childhood. He thought he had duly forgotten it, but there it is, in unconnected splinters, but clear and vivid like it happened yesterday.

He sees himself and Lenny sitting on the floor of Lenny's room, surrounded by a chaos of Lego and matchbox cars and action figures. Lenny has a lot of toys when he is little. He has several shelves with boxes full of toys. The rain beats against the window, and in the cosy half-dark, Lenny smiles happily at Carl. He is wearing his red-and-blue striped favorite T-Shirt.

Carl remembers summer camps with marshmallows falling from the sticks into the fire, bee stings, giggling and switching on pocket lamps in the loft beds and bathing in lakes green with algae. He remembers reading comics on the parking lot next to the super market and sharing a packet of chewing gum. He remembers chatting at the gate of Lenny's house while dusk is falling and the street lights start to glow, and the blackbirds are twittering at each other on the roofs. Lenny is standing on the garden path, his elbows on the gate. Carl is standing on the sidewalk. Lenny's mother throws the door open and screams at Lenny because he was not home when she told him to, and because he did not do a chore she wanted him to do.

Carl remembers the waste land which would become the site of the Springfield nuclear power plant a few years later. When they are ten, it is a balding patch of forest full of illegally dumped bulky refuse and ponds with tadpoles. A paradise for children. There is this oak tree, huge like a cathedral. Homer sits on the mossy ground, holding his foot and crying, because he fell off the tree and broke his toe. Stevie sits on the other side, also crying, because he did not succed in climbing up the tree at all. High above them, Lenny is crying, because he succeeded in climbing up the tree, but now he does not know how to climb back down. Carl cries because everybody else cries. A forest ranger comes out of the shrubbery. "What is all this wailing for? I heard you two miles from here ...!"

Carl remembers Homer's rotten farm and all the opportunities to do stupid things when hanging out there. Kicking around a rusty bucket for example and making so much noise the chicken flee out of their chicken run and stray on the street. Lighting a fire in the haystack and burning it down. Driving over the asparagus field with an antediluvian tractor.

There are older memories. Carl remembers Lenny and himself hopping from one puddle to the other on their way to school. They hold hands and scream "Hoppipolla! Hoppipolla!" The water has the creamy color of white coffee. Lenny drinks it, but spits it out. "Eww! That tastes bad! And now I have sand on my teeth!" They are too late to school. Mrs. Pickenpack is stunned when they burst into the classroom, laughing and dripping. Even their schoolbags are full of water, with erasers and candy papers swimming in it, and their text books are crumpled and brown. Lenny and Carl are sent to the headmaster's office. While they sit dripping on a bench, he calls their mothers to come and pick them up.

Holding hands. Carl also remembers cuddling Lenny when he was upset and cried. He remembers the soap smell coming from Lenny's hair and clothes. His family always used this expensive soap that smelled of peaches.

It is so long ago. A life has passed since then.

Man, he had been in love with Lenny when he was six. There were no sexual feelings involved, but everything else was there. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful that recalling it hurts like hell.

It was there all the time. It did not die when puberty and its hormones turned Carl into a douchebag. Another long forgotten memory: After somebody's party they slept on a large bed, Carl, Lenny, and two other guys. The two others had passed out and snored like pigs. The guys lying on the floor were also fast asleep. Carl and Lenny were pretty stoned, but halfway awake. Lenny snuggled against Carl's back, a hand on his chest and his feet in woolen socks between Carl's feet. They spent the whole night this way. It felt pleasant, lying cuddled together. Carl pretended to be asleep, and the next day, he pretended not to remember.

The same happened again. After a terrible fight with his parents, Carl turned around and clung to Lenny. He fell asleep with his nose at Lenny's collar bone. Lenny made a shy remark the next morning, but again Carl pretended not to remember.

It is still there. It just hibernated.

So does that make him gay? That label will not fit. When thinking of Lenny, he is hovering between friendship and love, between love and being in love, and even between hatred and love. No label will fit at all.

Although, some would say, that offer he made Lenny a few nights ago was pretty gay.

Carl remembers Lenny jumping up from the couch, excited and deeply hurt. Suddenly he understands what went wrong. A misconception on his part: He did not expect his friend to be sincere, and to be proud.

At this point Carl notices the excitement that has seized the other persons in the cabin, and he snaps out of his trance.

The co-pilot is standing in the cockpit door and tells Artie and Marge they will soon reach the area of five square miles where Homer and Lenny are supposed to be.

The sun is sinking and casts rays of light from one side of the cabin to the other. Marge's necklace and Artie's glass of champaign sparkle in a spotlight.

Carl looks out of the window and sees a different landscape. They are flying low over the desert. It is dotted with oil rigs. From above, they look like Eiffel Tower souveniers. Their shadows stretch over the sand. So do the shadows of the cacti and the rocks.

"One of the rigs in front of us is burning," says the pilot over the loudspeakers. "And there are people."

Marge kneels on the seat and stares out of the window. "Oh, I see it! Artie! We have to save them, no matter if they are Homer and Lenny or not!"

"Fly closer!" Artie advises the pilot.

Marge presses her nose against the window. "It's them! Oh, Homey!"

Carl looks out of the window, too. There they are, only a few yards under the helicopter, surrounded by a ring of flames that closes in on them. Both are in undershirts and grubby worker trousers and bespattered with oil. Homer is pacing up and down. Lenny is standing close to the steel tower, holding his helmet in front of his chest, eyes downcast.

He is ready to die. He is actually ready to die! A shiver runs down Carl's back.

Artie and the co-pilot try to stop Marge, because it is dangerous, but she pulls open the door and throws the rope ladder down.

"Climb up!"

Seeing Lenny climb up the ladder, Carl is relieved and sits down again.

But something goes wrong. Nobody comes in through the side door. Marge shouts desperately at Homer. Artie marches to the door and also shouts something down. The cabin fills with smoke and ash flakes. The floor under Carl's feet gets hot from the fire.

The pilot calls, "Hurry up a bit!"

What is going on there?

Carl finds himself standing behind Marge and Artie and peeking over their shoulders. Homer is crawling up the ladder, but Lenny is standing on the rig again. "There's nothing in that helicopter for me!"

Carl pushes everybody aside and leans out of the door. "Don't be so sure!"

Lenny turns around and looks upwards to him with a happy gasp. "Carl Carlson!"

He grabs the ropes of the ladder the same moment rig starts to tumble down. Actually, Lenny rushes upwards with squirrel speed, but to Carl it seems like everything happens in slow motion. Flames billow up, sending myriads of sparks skywards. The steel construction crashes hard on the spot where Lenny was standing a second ago. Burning oil sprays and splashes into all directions. The ladder begins to smolder.

The helicopter escapes the inferno by peeling off sharply. The sudden movement catapults Lenny into the cabin. Carl catches him and squeezes him against his chest. His friend is out of breath. He is sticky with oil and soaked with sweat. He smells of acid smoke, and also of hard work, and of the desert. Under his rough clothes he is warm and soft like a child.

The co-pilot loosens the burning rope ladder and lets it drop into the depth. Sending a prayer to Heaven, he slams the door shut. He looks at the people in the cabin, avoids looking at them again and retreats into the cockpit.

Homer and Marge kiss and smooch like there was no tomorrow. Artie lies on the seats and coughs pathetically. The smoke was too much for his lungs. Carl whispers hoarsely to his friend. "Your shirt is burning." He pats out the smoldering spots on Lenny's shoulders. Looking him over, he discovers more smoldering spots in the wrinkles of his ten sizes too large worker trousers and pats them out, too. "There are embers in your hair." Carl brushes them away. Examining Lenny's hair in the smoke-laden sunlight, he discovers something Lenny himself probably does not know yet: Silver begins to mix in at his temples. Carl runs his hand gently over Lenny's hair and wraps his arms around him, squeezing him even tighter than before, whispering, "Lenny, what where you doing? Hmm? What were you doing?"

Lenny clings to him and sobs so violently it shakes his body. Tears and snot run into Carl's collar. Carl is himself crying, but silently, and it is quickly over.

He manoeuvres Lenny into the corner and sits down with him.

Lenny's face is devastated from crying. "Carl, I h-have Jack Daniels for breakf-fast, but I'm still not t-tough," he sobs.

Carl gives off a laugh. "Not tough. Lenny, you're great. I love you, man." He pulls out a flask from one of his pockets. "Speaking of Jack Daniels ..."

Lenny downs the content in a gulp.

Artie is still coughing. His throat hurts. His belly hurts. His _heart_ hurts. The love of his life and her fatty husband are still smooching and kissing the brains out of each other. They lose their balance and fall down, and lying on the floor they go on smooching. They roll against Artie's feet. He politely retreats into the back of the cabin and stumbles against that black guy with the baby cardigan, who asks him, "Got any Jack Daniels? Or Scotch? Or Jaegermeister?"

Artie is not sure. His eyes were full of tears from coughing. Were those weirdos sobbing into each other's collars just moments ago? The way they hugged was a bit too passionate for his straight and conservative tastes anyway.

Artie retrieves a half-empty bottle. "I forgot what this is. Brought it from Australia. Probably it's fermented kangaroo urine."

"Thanks, that will do." The weirdo grins, thus presenting snow white teeth. He returns with the bottle of kangaroo piss to his friend, and they brotherly share it.

_Even those wackos have each other. And whom have I? _Artie thinks. He sighs and rubs his head. _Poor Artie_, he thinks, _poor Artie, poor Artie._

* * *

He drops Homer and Marge off on their front lawn. The helicopter is almost back at his private heliport, when he notices he might should have dropped Lenny and Carl somewhere off, too.

They still sit opposite to him, motionless and with that blank expression people always get when they listen to Artie while Artie talks about Artie. The oil stains on Lenny's front have rubbed off mirror-inverted on Carl. Sitting next to each other, they look like a Rorschach Test.

Artie is drunk and desperate and just has to talk to someone. Having been in the same high school is enough to turn those proles into close friends.

"You know, the problem is, no matter how rich and famous a nerd gets, for other people he is still a nerd ..."

It is late evening when they land on Artie's premises. He leads his visitors into his villa, where they feel misplaced. Especially Lenny – walking over the thick, expensive carpets with worker boots that are caked with dirt feels awkward.

Artie makes them sit down on a sofa. A servant girl brings cocktails. They sip at them while Artie goes on talking about Artie.

He runs out to fetch a photo album. Lenny lets off a tortured sigh. "I hope he gives us something to eat." He was on that oil rig since six o'clock in the morning. The only thing that keeps him awake is his hunger.

Carl grins. "Don't you want to see that photo album? It surely has cute photos of little Artie making poo-poo on his potty."

"Oh, God, no."

"I admit, I could do with something steak-like, too."

"Don't talk of steaks. Oww!"

When Artie returns, Lenny asks him shyly, "Uh, Artie? Would you mind if we got a bite of -"

Artie interrupts him, and the plea goes unheard.

Artie leads them around on his premises to brag with his riches. He had planned to give Marge this tour. Just canceling it would leave him even more unsatisfied than he is already, so Lenny and Carl have to endure it instead of Marge.

Near the monkey cage in Artie's private zoo Lenny spots a sack with peanuts. He and Carl exchange looks, then they hastily stuff their pockets. Following Artie, they leave a trail of peanut peel.

They enter a greenhouse with an artificial jungle and parrots flying from one palm tree to the other. While Artie goes on talking, Lenny opens a large pocket knife behind his back and stealthily harvests a pineapple, which he pares and cuts in two, while Carl screens him from Artie's sight.

Artie turns around and finds his visitors dripping with pineapple juice.

"Oh, are you hungry? We'll have something to eat soon. Only one more greenhouse ..."

That last greenhouse is so sultry they are covered with sweat in no time. The air is laden with heavy scents from exotic flowers.

"Has some erotic about it," Carl remarks.

Lenny gasps. He is hardly able to breathe. The flower petals burn in the strange color nobody sees but him. "Excuse me." He rushes out of the nearest door.

Unfortunately Artie forgets he promised them food and, back in his villa, drags them through his modern art collection. Lenny looks sicker and sicker. Carl finally saves them by innocently commenting Artie's work. "Well, strictly speaking, you're not a computer nerd. You didn't do programming, or invented anything having to do directly with computers. You just dealt with the sounds they make."

Artie is visibly pissed off. He is so pissed off he finally remembers it is past midnight. "I think I taxed your patience enough. Here. You can sleep at my guest mansion." He throws a key at Carl, and one moment later, he is gone, vanished somewhere in his vast villa.

"Looks like we are free, mate." Carl grins at Lenny.

This is when Lenny spots a particularly strange sculpture, says, "Carl, I think, I ..." and faints.

He wakes up lying on the floor with Carl's folded cardigan under his head. Carl, in his pullover, studies the plate at the art work's pedestal. "'Leda and the Swan'. I knew it was something perverted, but could not figure out what exactly."

"Let's get out of here," Lenny pleads.

Carl helps him up.

The guest mansion is a little house of its own, dark and stuffy when they walk in, with a woman's parfume lingering in the air.

"Do you think he will send us something to eat?" Lenny sounds desparate.

"There surely is a fridge somewhere in here."

Carl goes searching for that fridge. Meanwhile, Lenny walks into the bathroom and stops in the middle. It is like he met his identical twin. His reflection is turning towards him in a six-square-metre mirror. Lenny examines himself from head to feet. Hmm, he does not look bad. Especially for his age. The rough and dirty clothes, the burn holes and the visible exhaustion make him look like a daredevil.

Everything in the bathroom is blue and green and turquoise, like the deeper waters of an ocean. Gold and coral blink in the soft light. There are tiny images of starfish and sea horses on the tiles. In front of Lenny's tired eyes they dance like they were alive. The bathtub is large enough for an elephant.

"Carl, look at this ritzy bathroom!"

Carl appears at the door. "Not bad. Lenny, there is a fridge. Guess what was in there." He holds up a sixpack of expensive Danish beer and a piece of soap.

"The beer at least isn't bad."

Carl twists a bottle out of the sixpack and hands it to Lenny. Lenny opens it with his pocket knife and hands it back. Carl hands him a second bottle, which Lenny also opens. He drinks so greedily beer splashes over his T-shirt.

They do not need to drink much. The alcohol hits their sober stomachs and races through their systems at light speed.

"You know what I'll do?" Carl says. "Order the most expensive pizzas this neighborhood has to offer. Artie can pay the bill."

"Do that. Serves him right for letting us starve. And I'll have a bath. I just need that now."

It takes a long time to fill that bathtub. Lenny switches off the light, but leaves the door ajar. In the almost-darkness he drops his clothes on the floor and gets into the water. There are plastic bottles lined up around the bathtub. Lenny opens them, and when he likes the smell of the content, he squirts it into the water. Foam starts to build up.

Through the noise of the running water he can hear Carl talking at the phone.

Carl appears in the door again when the water reaches to Lenny's waist. "I ordered food from an expensive restaurant. With caviar and truffles and such. I don't remember what exactly I ordered. All I know is, our friend Artie will have to pay a lot for it."

Lenny is leaning back comfortably, his arms resting on the side of the bathtub, holding his half-empty beer bottle carelessly between two fingers.

Carl looks at his friend. Hours ago, Lenny tried to commit suicide and nearly succeeded. You would not think that, seeing him like this.

"You feel comfortable in there, Lenny, hmm?"

"Oh, very."

Carl sets his beer bottle on the floor. "Move over. I'm coming in."

He drops his clothes on top of Lenny's. Having the only light source behind him, he is a silhouette with a faintly glowing outline.

He steps in and sits down next to Lenny. The hot water does him a power of good. The tension in his back from all the noise and shaking in the helicopter goes away. The herbal essences in the water (and the Danish beer) make him dizzy in a pleasant way.

They are half asleep when there is a thunderous knock at the door. They flinch so violently it makes the water slosh out of the bathtub and splash on the floor. Lenny turns off the water tap. In the following silence the thunderous knock is repeated.

Carl gets out of the bathtub and rips a towel off some hook to wrap it around his waist.

The delivery boy finds the door answered by a guy who is naked but for a towel and lots of foam sliding down his body. "Mr. Ziff will pay the bill!" he says when he takes the delivery, then he slams the door shut.

Carl arranges the bags and boxes with the expensively smelling food on a little table next to the bathtub. He looks into a paper bag and hands it to Lenny. "Smells nice. And has truffles."

"God, I'm hungry. I would eat food for pigs."

Carl does not tell him truffles _are_ food for pigs.

In no time everything edible is cleaned away. Crumpled paper napkins swim in the puddle of water next to the bathtub. Carl drinks another beer and watches the dwindling foam islands drifting on the water. Lenny and him sit so still the surface has gotten smooth. A drop falling from the tap makes a loud 'plop' and sends out shiny ripples.

After much thinking, Carl finally says, "Lenny."

"Hmm?"

"Uh, you know, old pal, there's been a lot of drama going on between us lately."

"Yeah, one could say so."

"Uuuh, and ... I guess, I was a kind of an asshole on one or two occasions."

"We're not perfect, are we?"

"No. Uh. Actually I was an asshole the whole time. I said some terrible things to you. Uuh, Lenny. I'm sorry. I don't want to lose your friendship." Carl is exhausted like he climbed Mount Everest. Excusing uses up a lot of energy.

"Well, Carl, I guess I am to blame, too. I acted like a housewife with migraine."

Carl smiles affectionately at his friend. "It has been enough for the time being, don't you think?"

"Hmm." Lenny smiles back. "Carl, you know, our problem is, we don't talk problems over. I mean, not like we were each other's psychiatrists or so. Just saying, 'I'm in a bad mood because I have a problem!' That would be enough."

"I can't promise I'll do that, but I promise I'll try." Carl offers a foam-dripping hand.

Lenny shakes it. "Okay. I'll try too." He keeps holding Carl's hand. "Carl, promise me something else."

"And what?"

"Promise." Lenny's eyes are dark.

"I would rather know first."

"I'll ask nothing impossible of you. You'll like it. Well, after getting used to the thought. Do you promise?"

"Okay, yes, I promise. And now, what did I promise?"

"To help me bring the nuclear power plant up to code."

Carl is flabbergasted. "The nuclear power plant? Why the hell are you suddenly worried about the plant?"

"Eight months, Carl. That's my estimation. Eight months, and we'll have another Chernobyl."

"The reactors have been leaking along for twenty years, and nothing happened."

"Lately it got worse. The cleverer ones of our co-workers quitted their jobs already and moved into other states."

"Lenny, caring for the plant's safety is not your job."

"But no one does this fucking job!"

"Talk to Smithers."

"He won't listen to me. Because I'm an idiot. But he'll listen to you. People always listen to you."

"Lenny, you do me too much honor by saying that."

"Carl, do you know what? When I was on this oil rig, and everything was burning, I suddenly thought, _You're chickening out again, Lenford Leonard. You run away with your own troubles and leave the worst case scenario to others._"

Carl is at a loss for words.

"Who else is there to fix this problem than us, Carl? No, it's not our job, but the ones whose job it is either quitted, or don't care. We at least got this immunity against radioactivity."

"You really think there will be a worst case scenario?"

"Come on, Carl. You know the damn plant is unsafe, and it gets worse each week."

Carl cannot lie. "Yes. I know it. You're right."

"And this time you will not make the problem go away by ignoring it, Mr. Carlson. If you try, I'll hit something hard and heavy over your head. I swear this to you."

Carl is still surprised by this unsuspected turn their little man-to-man talk has taken. At the same time, he is more impressed than he would have been if his friend had asked for something like 'Never leave me' or 'Shove your big black cock up my ass'. To tell it like it is: That would not have impressed him at all.

Lenny has no plan, just a vague idea, Carl can tell that. Most likely they will fail. Most likely messing around with things that are not their business will get them into trouble, and that will be all.

Lenny is right. His shy bravery will be of no use when he is left alone. With Carl's help, he has a slight chance. Carl has to stick to his promise, for the sake of his friend, and for the sake of their friendship.

Damn it, he will stick to it! He looks forward to the fight!

"Count on me, Lenny. I'll kick the ass of everybody who will not listen to you."

Lenny beams with happiness.

Carl raises his bottle. "For the nuclear power plant." He takes a swig and passes the bottle to Lenny, who also takes a swig.

"For the nuclear power plant!"

Carl looks at Lenny. His friend is drunk, and his hair sticks to his face. He is still oily from his work. His arms are covered with scratches. He lost some pounds and looks sinewy. But he is alive. He found something to strive for. He is an idealist and insane, but Carl does not regard this as ridiculous anymore.

Lenny trusts him so much with this. No one else ever had such a strong belief in Carl, no matter how much they pretended to love him.

A friend for a lifetime. Carl's life has been a rocky ride. Much of it was cumbersome. People entered his world, made some noise and left again. Lenny was there all the time. Carl thinks of his weddings. Three times a different bride. Three times the same best man. When Carl married his third wife, Lenny wore a black eyepatch after having one of his accidents, which prompted little Gracie to ask him, "Are you a pirate?" Lenny smiled sadly and went on eating cake. The whole evening he ate from that damn wedding cake. He must have devoured several pounds of it, even more than Homer. At midnight, he was violently sick from all the cake, and all the cocktails. Was that a method to deal with a certain frustration?

Possibly there was a lot of frustration to deal with all those years. Brave old Lenny. Him getting a bit unnerved finally is pardonable.

All of Carl's walls and fences lay knocked flat.

You just have to love Lenny, whether you are gay or not. He is just adorable. People who do not see this are blind. He is just sweet. His personality is awesome.

Carl puts his arm around Lenny's shoulders. Something clinks on the bathroom floor: the beer bottle Lenny drops before laying his hand on Carl's chest. Carl runs his finger tips over Lenny's cheek and along his jaw, clumsily, but tenderly.

The next moment, Lenny is asleep. It happens so fast Carl needs a while to realize it.

"A bit much for one day, hmm?" he says to his friend, who is leaning against him, one arm around his neck, the other one in the water.

Carl himself is too stunned to move. He sits there, holding Lenny and burying his nose in his moist hair.

Finally, the water gets cold, and he shivers. "Lenny." He has to nudge and shake him to get him halfway awake.

Lenny lethargically holds Carl's wrists. "Uhh, Carl, don't ... I'm so ..."

"C'mon, I'm freezing."

Carl manages to get his friend out of the bathtub, wraps him into a bathrobe with the Ziff Corporation logo stitched on it, and maneouvres him into bed. There Lenny happily falls asleep again. Carl stretches out next to him.

Meh, whatever.

They sleep peacefully into the next day. Then they awake from a draft and find a young Mexican woman standing in their room and staring at them. She wears an apron and rubber gloves, and a trolley with cleaning tools is parked in the hall.

Carl says something soothing in Spanish to her. Lenny is a pile of terry cloth and shaggy hair next to him. The girl blushes and excuses, then vanishes into the bathroom and starts cleaning away the mess.

* * *

Artie has forgotten about his visitors and reacts confused when they show up in his home office.

"Uh, Artie? We would like to go home."

"Yes, yes. I won't keep you."

"Our home," Carl explains, "is in Springfield."

"Uh, oh, right. Sit down on the sofa over there until I finished -"

He phones his chauffeur, who drives them all the way back.

They are quiet during the drive. They sit on the back seat, close to each other, but not touching. Lenny has his hands in the pockets of his worker trousers. Carl looks at him. It is years ago since he saw Lenny so relaxed. The pained look he had been carrying around is gone. He is almost smiling. The smile is coming from inside, and it is mostly in his eyes.

Carl feels his confusion unravel. He is fed up with the love life he had until, well, yesterday. He could not have gone on with it longer.

He thinks of the nuclear power plant. To bring it up to code is impossible. They will have to do a hell lot of work to make it possible – Lenny and him, and Homer and Marge and their kids, and their co-workers, and the people of Springfield.

This could be the best thing that has ever happened to him.

He is strong enough now to stand other people's reactions.


End file.
